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

BoltonCrisis

Thanks for a measured response, LVF

No bills have been sent out to us, at all.

When we first raised this query, we were told we had been signed up for online banking. When I asked the CS adviser to check this (we never do this, completely unlikely) he confirmed that we hadn't requested this and had never logged into the account.

The only correspondence we've had are emails saying a meter reader is due to visit soon, and notification of direct debit increases (which we believed to be brought about by meter readings). No mention of estimation on anything, and the reason I'm focusing my frustration on this is that there has been no indication that (despite our agreement with E.ON) this hasn't been fulfilled for so long. It's taken them 2 and a half years to send us a letter saying something is amiss.

The Customer service specialist was concerned that our emails were not only informing us that a meter reader was attending, but were asking us not to send a reading. This struck him as unusual as he'd never seen such wording, and when I told him about not being able to read the meter and E.ON's proposal that they send an engineer every six months, he confirmed this had bee agreed with E.ON when we set the account up but hadn't been enacted; for whatever reason.

He confirmed at this point that, despite all this literature and correspondence to the contrary, they'd only been taking readings every two years. He later retracted this, however, as you can see.

It's been a catalog of errors, and I've been unsure of whether this solution is reasonable based on other peoples experiences.

macman

The supplier is only required to read the meter once every two years. Any intermediate reads are down to you. And the access issue is between you and the building manager to resolve-not the supplier.
The bottom line is that if you don't submit regular reads then this kind of situation inevitably arises. You have already been offered a fantastically advantageous settlement and I am bemused as to why you think you can improve on that.

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

Hello BoltonCrisis

I'm sorry this has taken so long to sort out. From what you say, I don't think it's been to the Ombudsman yet. It looks like it's been through our complaints procedures and a resolution's been offered. If I'm right and you're unhappy with the offer, you can still go to the Ombudsman for an independent review. Once the complaint is over 56 days old or we've reached deadlock, we'll write to you with details of how to do this. There's information about this on our website too.

Cardew's spot on about readings being rejected where they're out of line with what's gone before. This is meant to stop incorrect bills being sent and to flag up such cases so a specialist team can step in. Two and half years is unusually long and I can understand your frustration at not receiving a bill for this length of time. Did you ask us why we weren't sending bills?

As others have said, we subscribe to what's known as the 'Billing Code.' This means where we're at fault for not sending an accurate bill, we'll not charge for energy used more than 12 months before the issue was fixed.

Going forward, now the billing has been put right, future bills will follow on unless there's another significant discrepancy with the readings.

Even though you don't manage your account through our website, if you've given us readings online before, we'll continue to send emails asking for readings. For quarterly billed customers, these are sent at approximately three monthly intervals. Generally, over a year, two of these will let you know a meter reader is due to call. The other two will ask for customer readings. If it helps, you can stop these emails by unchecking the box on the final page of the meter reading screen.

Also understand the shock of the sudden rise in the monthly payments. Talk to the advisor looking after your complaint. They may be able to spread the balance over a longer period. Might ease the shock a little.

Again, I'm really sorry this has taken so long to sort. Hope the above helps a little.

Malc