Advice on £769 bill on changing tariffs

Lotusanne

Hello, would much appreciate any advice on this situation..its a bit hard to explain but here goes..
My one year contract with Eon ended 15th Nov . I have just changed to Tonik and have received my final bill from Eon to be £769 !! I was expecting it to be in credit, as I have had to make payment to both companies this month!
I have looked in to and found the following facts

* my last meter reading until final reading was Nov 17th 2017
* 1st Oct - I got a rebate of £105
* payments from 1st Nov were reduced from £99.50 to £93
* 31st Jan my bill stated that they had calculated my payments were too low but they were not increasing the Direct Debit at this point
* 31st Jan - my account was £279 in credit

I appreciate that some of this is my fault - I did not see the note on the bill about the DDs being too low. When the Fixed Tariff ended, I did look into changing but my mistake was that as my payments were still so low no other companies gave a better rate. I am also in your Energy club, and I did get emails suggesting that I could change to a lower tarriff. When I checked it, your site showed that you thought I was paying around £150 a month, but in fact I was only paying £93. I wrongly assumed that this was because I was on a lower tariff. In fact, my charges had gone up loads - but not my monthly payments. When the contract finished I did get an email to say if I did nothing my tariff would be switched to their standard variable tariff and it did list the charges, but this was hard to compare as the charges per therm were much higher, but the daily fee was much lower. As my payments had stayed the same I assumed that this had worked out to be a similar cost

I rand Eon yesterday and made payment plan to pay back £50 a month which is all I can afford. They said this was all I could do. Afterwards I started to question it all - I completely agree that I should have looked into it more -although I genuinely nhough I had - but surely when they put up my tariff they should have also put up my payments?

Do you think there is anything I can do?
Many thanks, Anne

BooJewels

Lotusanne wrote: »

Do you think there is anything I can do?

I'm afraid, if you've used the energy, you have to pay for it. Do you not work it out as you go along and check for yourself that you're paying the right amount?

But if you grab a paper, pencil and calculator, you can at least check now that it's the correct amount. If you don't know how to work it out, if you post some meter readings, we can crunch some numbers for you.

We need an idea of historic meter readings, the tariff you were on - unit/kWh rate and standing charge prices - not just the tariff name - and what you actually paid and we can work out if at least the sums are correct. If you were in credit in January and a massive deficit now, maybe estimates have been used earlier, leading to the error in what you were paying (it's caught up now you've supplied an accurate reading), or if you use electricity for heating, the very cold spell in February and March will have notched up an especially large usage for that period.

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena

Lotusanne wrote: »

Hello, would much appreciate any advice on this situation..its a bit hard to explain but here goes..
My one year contract with Eon ended 15th Nov . I have just changed to Tonik and have received my final bill from Eon to be £769 !! I was expecting it to be in credit, as I have had to make payment to both companies this month!
I have looked in to and found the following facts

* my last meter reading until final reading was Nov 17th 201
* 1st Oct - I got a rebate of £105
* payments from 1st Nov were reduced from £99.50 to £93
* 31st Jan my bill stated that they had calculated my payments were too low but they were not increasing the Direct Debit at this point
* 31st Jan - my account was £279 in credit

I appreciate that some of this is my fault - I did not see the note on the bill about the DDs being too low. When the Fixed Tariff ended, I did look into changing but my mistake was that as my payments were still so low no other companies gave a better rate. I am also in your Energy club, and I did get emails suggesting that I could change to a lower tarriff. When I checked it, your site showed that you thought I was paying around £150 a month, but in fact I was only paying £93. I wrongly assumed that this was because I was on a lower tariff. In fact, my charges had gone up loads - but not my monthly payments. When the contract finished I did get an email to say if I did nothing my tariff would be switched to their standard variable tariff and it did list the charges, but this was hard to compare as the charges per therm were much higher, but the daily fee was much lower. As my payments had stayed the same I assumed that this had worked out to be a similar cost

I rand Eon yesterday and made payment plan to pay back £50 a month which is all I can afford. They said this was all I could do. Afterwards I started to question it all - I completely agree that I should have looked into it more -although I genuinely nhough I had - but surely when they put up my tariff they should have also put up my payments?

Do you think there is anything I can do?
Many thanks, Anne

Hi Lotusanne and welcome to the forum.

I'll try and answer everything in order as best I can.

Your one year tariff with Eon ended 15th Nov, this is around the same time that we had an actual meter read, therefore the bills from this date would have been charged on a standard tariff with estimated meter reads.

We have now received actual meter reads from your new supplier (are these correct?) and we have billed you up to these causing what we call a catch up bill, this also covers the coldest months of the year when bills are higher.

The payments may have been reduced in Nov as you were still on the cheaper tariff and we may have had more accurate reads up to this point.

When we advised on the bill in Jan that the payments were not enough to cover your usage, this is for information, as we wouldn't adjust the DD until the review date. You can though, use the Direct Debit manager tool on your online account to change your payment amount by up to 20% with reads and 5% without. We also have the real time billing function where you can enter your reads at any time and produce an up to date bill or balance.

31st Jan account was £279 in credit, this will have been to estimated meter reads, by the sounds of it, we would ask on estimated bills for you to provide a meter read, to get the account accurate.

I understand you did receive the email about the tariff changing to standard prices, but I'll take feedback away that you didn't find this clear.

We wouldn't automatically increase a Direct Debit when the tariff changes, but we would let you know if the payments needed to change on the bill, it appears we did let you know.

I think the person you've spoken to here when you called has done the best they can for you and let you spread the balance over a number of months.

If though, you are still unhappy, you will need to contact us again and raise a complaint. You'll be put in touch with a complaints manager to investigate this for you. The process is on the website.

I hope this helps a little.

Thank you

Helena

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

Without meter readings, you will not get accurate billing. Your billing at £93 seems rather large. if you are in a standard house, three bedroom, your consumption should be as follows
Elect Cooking and Lights etc 3,300 kWhs per year
Heating 12,500 kWhs per year.


If you are on dual fuel elect and gas tariff this should be around £75 to £80 a month. If you are all electric, others will help.


Question.
Are your bills estimates. Estimates lead to errors going on. It is better for a while to do monthly updates on line and don't be fooled when the heating is off!

Robin9

Lotusanne - two bits of clarification please. Tonik will have asked you for a meter reading as part of the switch process. Is the reading you gave the same as on your final E.ON bill ?

Are you sure you read the meter correctly ?

Lotusanne

Hi, thanks for your reply, Unfortunately the meter reading is correct, I took a photo on my phone, and that is the same as the one on the Eon bill as well as Tonik, that was my first thought too, I had misread it or it had got changed somehow

Lotusanne

Hi Helena, thanks for taking the trouble to go through my post and reply to it. I do not dispute that the bill is correct, based on the new tariff and readings, but it was a terrible to shock to find I owed so much, in so short a space of time since the last meter reading, that is £769 on top of the monthly payments in less than 4 months?? Yes a cold snap - but even so? My main complaint is that I do not understand why the monthly payments didn't go up automatically? They went down automatically! I was lulled into a false sense of security. I did check on the energy tool on this site on more than one occasion, but no other company offered a lower monthly payment than what i was paying to Eon so I thought it was still the best option. Surely as the experts, if someone reverts to a much more expensive tariff the onus is in you to put up their monthly payments?

matelodave

The general advice is to read your meters at least once a month and send the readings to the energy supplier.

You should also examine your on-line statement once a month to make sure that your readings are being used and see how much you are in credit or debit and work out if your payments are covering your consumption.

It will also alert you to any tariff changes that you may have forgotten about. Just checking once every three to six months means that arrears can ramp up quite rapidly, especially in the winter when most people use between 60-70% of their total annual energy.

By checking your meters more frequently you'll also get a better idea of your consumption and you'll be able to try out energy saving measures and see how they affect it. If you don't monitor it you cant control it.

Cardew

Lotusanne wrote: »

I rand Eon yesterday and made payment plan to pay back £50 a month which is all I can afford. They said this was all I could do. Afterwards I started to question it all - I completely agree that I should have looked into it more -although I genuinely nhough I had - but surely when they put up my tariff they should have also put up my payments?

Do you think there is anything I can do?
Many thanks, Anne

Although the below thread concerns BG it might well apply. i.e. if you set up a payment plan having left a supplier, they will/may/can notify a Credit Reference Agency and it could affect your credit record.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/74173854#Comment_74173854

Perhaps Helena can advise on Eon's policy

PennineAcute

Sometimes energy supplier experts is an oxymoran.

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena

Lotusanne wrote: »

Hi Helena, thanks for taking the trouble to go through my post and reply to it. I do not dispute that the bill is correct, based on the new tariff and readings, but it was a terrible to shock to find I owed so much, in so short a space of time since the last meter reading, that is £769 on top of the monthly payments in less than 4 months?? Yes a cold snap - but even so? My main complaint is that I do not understand why the monthly payments didn't go up automatically? They went down automatically! I was lulled into a false sense of security. I did check on the energy tool on this site on more than one occasion, but no other company offered a lower monthly payment than what i was paying to Eon so I thought it was still the best option. Surely as the experts, if someone reverts to a much more expensive tariff the onus is in you to put up their monthly payments?

Good morning Lotusanne,

I fully understand.

It does sound like the payments were reduced as this was a review date, when we let you know in the letter about your tariff ending we advised you to change the payment amount, but didn't automatically change this as it wasn't at the time of a review.

I would also say, it always worth looking at your full online account with us ( I know you've left now) as this has all of your usage and exact account information on.

Cardew wrote: »

Although the below thread concerns BG it might well apply. i.e. if you set up a payment plan having left a supplier, they will/may/can notify a Credit Reference Agency and it could affect your credit record.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/74173854#Comment_74173854

Perhaps Helena can advise on Eon's policy

Morning Cardew,

It will leave a footprint on the credit file, but this should be a positive as the payments are being made. It will though, be negative if payments are missed or the arrangement stops.

Thank you

Helena