E.ON admit to not checking meter, drop a £700 bill and will only 'goodwill' £50 of it

BoltonCrisis

So...

At Christmas we received a £2K underpayment bill from E.ON, which we obviously queried immediately.

As we explained upon moving in, we don't have access to our electricity meter (we live in a poorly designed mill conversion, and the meters are placed down a service corridor that needs an engineer to access). We knowwe have a legal right to access our own electricity meter, but E.ON assured us they would check this for us every 6 months, so we didn't pursue the arduous task of challenging our building managers on this.

Had we known how incompetent E.ON were, we probably would have done; but hindsight is 20/20, guys.

Anyway, every 6 months we receive an email from E.ON stating that 'we don't need to supply a meter reading this time, as an engineer is due to visit the premises soon'... which for all intents and purposes indicates that all is going to plan, and the agreement is being kept.

As I'd said to E.ON, should they have informed us they weren't taking our readings, we would have arranged for this to be done ourselves; but they were giving us confirmation that they were attending to it, and no indication whatsoever it wasn't being done.

Upon receipt of this bill (we don't account manage online, we've had a direct debit set-up since moving in and this is one of the first paper documents they've sent us) E.ON informed us our readings had in-fact been estimated since we moved in and any increases to our direct debit were a result of the PPU going up, and nothing to do with usage. When challenged on why they hadn't been reading our meter, and why they had been sending literature saying they were reading it, the Customer Service employee denied all knowledge of any emails, and refused to give an email address so I could forward him the transcripts.

The Issue was escalated, blah blah blah, I get through to someone who takes me seriously and finally looks at the emails I have been being sent, and confirms something is suspicious.

The issue was investigated, and I received the following response from E.ON:

The problem with your account is that due to some read estimates the account did not bill using actual reads when our meter reader successfully visited and read your meter. For example:

The computer estimated a reading of 11480 for the 11 December 2012.

But the actual read was 11812.

As the actual reading appeared out of line with the estimate the system did not accept the reads the meter read was sending to your account. I can confirm from our meter readers we were definitely reading your meter regularly but the computer was not using the readings that were sent.

This made your account not bill for a long time. Now your account has been billed correctly and I have used all the correct reads I could find it produced a balance of £1,344.64. After this was evaluated by our ombudsman liaison team they deemed that £599.61 needed to be wiped off by E.ON.

Therefore your new correct balance is £713.03.

I will be in contact with you again within the next few days with an offer to resolve your complaint.

Now, that seems to me as though the ombudsman has only made them wipe off the amount that exceeds a certain statute of limitation, I.E the first twelve months of the bill...

They've offered £50 "goodwill" on top of this, but are looking to quadruple our monthly payments to make up the deficit.

Whilst I'm obviously grateful the ombudsman has intervened, and E.ON customer services (or at least the agent that has been dealing with this) have been nothing but helpful, it still smacks a little bit that they've confirmed we've done nothing wrong, the balls-up is entirely on their end and yet they're only knocking off a nominal amount other than their legal obligations as instructed by an ombudsman.

What do you think, guys; should I be fighting this harder, or should I lay down and take the £700 hit?

Cardew

You have fallen foul of a situation that affects all energy suppliers.


The 'all seeing, all knowing' computer has an algorithm that will reject an actual meter reading - by yourself or an official meter reader - if it 'thinks' the reading is a mistake. From then on it will always reject meter readings until there is human intervention.(as in your case)


You are culpable to some degree that you didn't check your meter reading when you continued to get estimated bills - it is not E.On's fault that the building manager is 'difficult' - you should have exercised your legal right.


Quite honestly to have £599.61 wiped off your bill and an offer of a further £50 reduction is IMO an excellent result. You haven't 'taken a £700 hit' Eon have taken a £649.61 hit! and you have had a 50% reduction on the electricity you used.

[Deleted User]

I'm surprised you can't get a smart meter installed that transmits the readings somewhere else

Good win though

BoltonCrisis

' it is not E.On's fault that the building manager is 'difficult' - you should have exercised your legal right.'

You're mis-reading the situation here, somewhat. Our building managers aren't 'difficult'... we could have got a meter reading upon request. we were told not to, however... as E.ON were explicitly telling us they were reading the meter: which they were, they just weren't processing it properly... again, not sure how any of this could be construed as our fault. There wasn't a problem to remedy until this happened, so obviously we weren't chasing down problems that we had no idea existed.

"You are culpable to some degree that you didn't check your meter reading when you continued to get estimated bills"... the first time we were notified our bills were being estimated was when we received this Bill, which we queried immediately. Both E.ON and ourselves were under the impression readings were being taken, which they were; they just weren't being processed by E.ON.

I'm not sure how much of a "Win" this truly is, as all they've done from a C.S perspective is knocked £50 off the amount they are legally allowed to pursue...

Nada666

BoltonCrisis wrote: »

I'm not sure how much of a "Win" this truly is, as all they've done from a C.S perspective is knocked £50 off the amount they are legally allowed to pursue...

Not true. They are legally allowed to pursue you for the whole amount. You have been given a £700 goodwill plus £50 goodwill deduction from a legally payable debt.

You are responsible for checking your meters and statements are correct. Not bothering to check your usage is neglect on your part.

Cardew

BoltonCrisis wrote: »

so we didn't pursue the arduous task of challenging our building managers on this.

-
-

I'm not sure how much of a "Win" this truly is, as all they've done from a C.S perspective is knocked £50 off the amount they are legally allowed to pursue...

Well if semantics rule and 'arduous task' isn't 'being difficult'

It is pertinent to point out that companies can legally pursue all of any debt under 6 years old(5 in Scotland). There is a voluntary code of conduct, that not all energy companies have signed, that states they will not back-bill more than 12 months under certain conditions. presumably it was under this provision that your bill had £599.61 written off.

The bottom line however is that to have £649.61 written off a bill is excellent IMO.

sheffield_lad

Good result for the OP, but that money comes from somewhere often other customers via higher bills.


There needs to be an education about energy. Explaining the pitfalls of not recording your own consumption would be a good start.

BoltonCrisis

Ahhh, I see, this makes sense now.

I was advised by a friend who works for E.ON that "they are only allowed" to pursue 12 months backdated in such circumstances, I didn't realize this was something they voluntarily opted into, and not a legal requirement.

Again, just to clarify; we were being told our bills weren't estimated.. When our direct debit went up, every year, we thought this was in reflection of our usage.

E.ON also didn't realize we were being estimated, as they were sending out engineers, and all correspondence from them reflected this.

We weren't ignoring estimations or "Not bothering to check your usage", at all; we were being consistently misinformed, due to an internal error on E.ONs systems... this is indisputable, and we've had an apology stating just such a failure...

Any lecture in "Explaining the pitfalls of not recording your own consumption" would, in this example, be prefixed with the statement;

"Despite us actively, consistently and with some regularity be informing you directly that we are checking your meter, as instructed and agreed, we may fail to do this. Also, whilst failing to do this, we may not inform you at any point we are failing to do this. We may also send overt instruction to actually not send your meter readings to us. Ignore any correspondence or confirmation from us"... :-)

As we told them ourselves, if they'd informed us they weren't taking readings, we could have supplied them ourselves. But they gave us direct instructions not to do this... I know it'shard to believe, so much so that the first CS agent wouldn't believe it, but its true... E.ON really are sending emails out telling people not to send meter readings, and if they're doing it to us, who knows how many other people are experiencing this? very worrying, regardless of outcome here.

You've all been very helpful, I just needed to check that we shouldn't be pursuing this further, if perhaps there was a precedent for this with an acceptable solution. Thanks.

Cardew

What I fail to understand is that you come across as if you have been wronged in this matter; and are still being wronged i.e. 'should I lay down and take a £700 hit' and you might have grounds for further compensation.

The bottom line is you used electricity to the value £1,344.64. Eon have admitted culpability in the billing procedure and have written off £599.61 of that debt - and it is a debt. They are also prepared to offer you a further £50 rebate.

Would you be happy if you had overpaid £1,344.64 and only got £663.03 rebate?

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BoltonCrisis

Wow. A measured response would be nice, lol.

I think your projecting some undisclosed frustration, but as you've already pointed out you're being a little pedantic, but only where it suits your goals it seems.

I'm reasonably content with the solution E.ON are providing, but there are a few details (which you're conveniently sweeping past, and focusing your pedantry elsewhere) which stick out to me, even after everything here is said and done.

Firstly, we came here in case this had happened to anyone else. Yes, I am concerned that this is affecting other people, as it's clearly happened here and elsewhere too (considering they have a standardized email template they send out to people in our position), but you've added your own reading to this; its very concerning because I am an E.ON customer, and if this is considered appropriate business practice it does not bode well for my future experiences with them.

If E.ON are unable to guarantee they will check readings, why would they ever consider it appropriate to instruct customers directly not to send readings? Is the point in this forum not to flag up such occasions, so consumers can identify scenarios similar to their own and identify how common or widespread their problem is?

The whole point of electricity readings is to measure ones usage. The readings we were supplied were incorrect, and our usage was not amended as a result of this for 2 years. We weren't uninformed, we were misinformed. E.ON have admitted this, and apologized. Under such conditions, any argument to say we are liable to pay for more than we were informed we were using, is premised upon self-detonating logic.

We would have been paying more over a longer period, or consuming less electricity through changing our usage, if we'd had accurate readings; or even been told our readings weren't accurate. We were told our readings were accurate, so we didn't.

And I don't even know how to approach this statement;

P.S. Being pedantic(again) the title of the thread is incorrect. Eon do not 'admit not checking the meter'. In your opening post they clearly say the meter was read, but the actual readings were not used!

And you don't see that as a problem with E.ON? maybe they took the readings once or twice but they didn't get through, but for 2.5 Years?! without any notification? with continued statements that this was taking place?

Talk about pedantic... what does it matter if the readings weren't read or read and not used? they weren't applied to our account, through an internal problem and E.ON's end... whilst at the same time informing us as customers that everything was fine...

Yes I'm very happy that, regardless of legal obligations or internal policy E.ON have wiped off a large proportion of the bill, I've never indicated anything otherwise. All I've come here to ask is that, given the specific developments and admittance of failure, £50 would be considered appropriate in the circumstances?

Most people have said, courteously and helpfully, 'Yes'.

You, Cardew, have systematically and entirely unnecessarily tried to undermine both my argument and, obscurely, my motives; as though some kind of plea on here is an attempt to better my real world problem.

E.ON send emails to people instructing them not to provide meter readings, then try to reclaim their lost revenue with an unreasonable bill and repayment plan.

I've been fighting this since early December, I've finally got them to talk about discounts and (besides honoring the obligation dictated to them by an ombudsman), they're only willing to knock of £50 for the trouble we've been through...

... and you're having a go at me for feeling wronged?

Damn straight I feel wronged. I'm incredibly thankful for the £600 reduction, but that came under order of Ombudsman. That's the minimum. E.ON only consider themselves culpable for an extra £50 for their malfeasance. If that's all there is to it, fine; but I'd be an idiot if I accepted this and then came on here to find someone in my circumstances that'd had the debt written off entirely.

I suppose I'm a bigger idiot for wasting time composing an argument against a troll, however... :-(

lvf

Despite everything that's been mentioned so far, there's something I can't quite get my head around.

You continuously say there was no mention whatsoever that the reads used were estimated, yet in every bill sent with estimated reads, there is a large print and bold "estimated" on the first page. Did you check your bills when they came in, and are you certain this wasn't mentioned on the bill? The customer does have some responsibility to ensure the bills are correct, and while you didn't have meter access, surely you could have checked this at least?

Also, E.ON send the 'meter reader will be out to you' email to all customers in a certain area where a reader is expected to be attending. This is completely independent of whether or not access to the property can be gained and whether or not the reads are being used. So I guess I'm wondering why you base a large portion of your frustration in this? Especially as E.ON have already held the hands up and admitted the reads obtained were not used correctly.

I know how horrible it has been to be landed with a £700+ bill however, as essentially that is what has happened, and I do understand that if the opportunity arose where you could have it written off that you would pursue it, so yes completely understand the reason for opening the thread, but as mentioned above thia is probably the best offer you'll get from E.ON. However you should at least ask to have the balance spread out over longer, as upping your DD fourfold is a hefty jump.