Eon involving debt recovery over electricity supplied and correctly billed by Scottish Power

MikePeacock

dogshome said:

Sorry OP, but I think this problem is of your own making.

If your have a billing beef with any supplier, not just energy, you can't just pay them what you think is the right amount and walk away

Eon, like most of the energy suppliers have 1,000's of customers and the 'books' have to be controlled by a Computer - So the Computer issues a bill for £XXX, but then see's that only £XX has been paid and it's programme tells it to collect the short fall.

If you had made a justified Phoned, Emailed or Written Complaint about the bill, it would have been altered manually and computed before you paid it, but as things stand it's a mare's nest of different departmental responsibilities.

Your best bet is to WRITE a letter headed COMPLAINT to Eon and post it to by Royal Mail with a free certificate of posting.

Set the all the figures as concisely as you can and keep it short.

Hi,
I understand why you might think that, but I have not listed every step here. I did write long before I started this post and their response was that I had to tell SP to resend the readings via "Industry Flows"  which of course I did.

MikePeacock

Strongbow1 said:

dogshome said:

Sorry OP, but I think this problem is of your own making.

If your have a billing beef with any supplier, not just energy, you can't just pay them what you think is the right amount and walk away

Eon, like most of the energy suppliers have 1,000's of customers and the 'books' have to be controlled by a Computer - So the Computer issues a bill for £XXX, but then see's that only £XX has been paid and it's programme tells it to collect the short fall.

If you had made a justified Phoned, Emailed or Written Complaint about the bill, it would have been altered manually and computed before you paid it, but as things stand it's a mare's nest of different departmental responsibilities.

Your best bet is to WRITE a letter headed COMPLAINT to Eon and post it to by Royal Mail with a free certificate of posting.

Set the all the figures as concisely as you can and keep it short.

Complaining does work.

I was unfairly harassed  by EoN when they refused to accept my readings.

Complaining by "chat" worked super quick.

Access is via the complaint menu.

Strongbow1 said:

dogshome said:

Sorry OP, but I think this problem is of your own making.

If your have a billing beef with any supplier, not just energy, you can't just pay them what you think is the right amount and walk away

Eon, like most of the energy suppliers have 1,000's of customers and the 'books' have to be controlled by a Computer - So the Computer issues a bill for £XXX, but then see's that only £XX has been paid and it's programme tells it to collect the short fall.

If you had made a justified Phoned, Emailed or Written Complaint about the bill, it would have been altered manually and computed before you paid it, but as things stand it's a mare's nest of different departmental responsibilities.

Your best bet is to WRITE a letter headed COMPLAINT to Eon and post it to by Royal Mail with a free certificate of posting.

Set the all the figures as concisely as you can and keep it short.

Complaining does work.

I was unfairly harassed  by EoN when they refused to accept my readings.

Complaining by "chat" worked super quick.

Access is via the complaint menu.

Strongbow1 said:

dogshome said:

Sorry OP, but I think this problem is of your own making.

If your have a billing beef with any supplier, not just energy, you can't just pay them what you think is the right amount and walk away

Eon, like most of the energy suppliers have 1,000's of customers and the 'books' have to be controlled by a Computer - So the Computer issues a bill for £XXX, but then see's that only £XX has been paid and it's programme tells it to collect the short fall.

If you had made a justified Phoned, Emailed or Written Complaint about the bill, it would have been altered manually and computed before you paid it, but as things stand it's a mare's nest of different departmental responsibilities.

Your best bet is to WRITE a letter headed COMPLAINT to Eon and post it to by Royal Mail with a free certificate of posting.

Set the all the figures as concisely as you can and keep it short.

Complaining does work.

I was unfairly harassed  by EoN when they refused to accept my readings.

Complaining by "chat" worked super quick.

Access is via the complaint menu.

Thanks - I tried Chat as well before starting this post - I just got the "computer says your reading is...." response and was told to go back to SP

MikePeacock

Update 11 Nov 2020
The Ombudsman ruled in my favour
Eon now have until 9th December to credit my account with the overcharge, to remove excess charges and to write an apology so that any effect on credit rating can be reversed.
The Ombudsman did say that the account should have been put on hold while investigations were made so that excess charges would not have been applied. Having the bill from Scottish Power and a photograph of the meter reading on changeover day were clearly important bits of evidence.

So if you find yourself in this position, do not give up however many calls you get from Sigma Red. When Sigma Red told me the autodialler would only ever phone me if the balance was still seen as overdue and could not accept any evidence by email (they can only accept payment) I felt justified in blocking their calls on my phone. Clearly I am not advising you do this but it did keep my stress levels down as they were calling twice a week. It was also important not to simply ignore the problem and to keep complaining although I never did get a reply to these complaints or to either my email or my tracked letter sent P&C to their CEO.

I will not now add to this post unless anything of note/help to others appears

MWT

A somewhat bizarre result as it appears that the E.ON billing was correctly using the adjusted figure from the middleman so should have been paid without change as the difference was too small to allow an appeal...

MikePeacock

MWT said:

A somewhat bizarre result as it appears that the E.ON billing was correctly using the adjusted figure from the middleman so should have been paid without change as the difference was too small to allow an appeal...

Hi, No, the issue here is that both suppliers are supposed to use the same reading even if it was different to mine. Eon did not use the same reading as Scottish Power so I was being charged twice for the overlap. If SP and Eon had used the same reading, but different to mine by less than 250 units then it would have been a very small difference in £ and certainly not worth complaining about. We should not have to pay for the same electricity twice.

brewerdave

MikePeacock said:

MWT said:

A somewhat bizarre result as it appears that the E.ON billing was correctly using the adjusted figure from the middleman so should have been paid without change as the difference was too small to allow an appeal...

Hi, No, the issue here is that both suppliers are supposed to use the same reading even if it was different to mine. Eon did not use the same reading as Scottish Power so I was being charged twice for the overlap. If SP and Eon had used the same reading, but different to mine by less than 250 units then it would have been a very small difference in £ and certainly not worth complaining about. We should not have to pay for the same electricity twice.

This is a key issue that far too many front line Customer Services staff at Utility Cos. fail to understand. I've had the 250 kwh difference quoted back to me on at least two occasions when I swapped supplier to explain why the losing supplier hasn't used the new Company opening read to close an account.. One CS person even blamed the difference on the third party verifiers  !!
Fortunately I've resolved these differences without the Ombudsman - in fact ,I've actually ended up "in profit" because they tie themselves up in knots trying to resolve final bill differences 

MWT

MikePeacock said:

Hi, No, the issue here is that both suppliers are supposed to use the same reading even if it was different to mine. Eon did not use the same reading as Scottish Power so I was being charged twice for the overlap.

True, but it looks like the error was SP not using the 3rd party number but still using your reading.

Both sides should have been using the 'wrong' reading, not the one you took...

Strongbow1

MWT said:

MikePeacock said:

Hi, No, the issue here is that both suppliers are supposed to use the same reading even if it was different to mine. Eon did not use the same reading as Scottish Power so I was being charged twice for the overlap.

True, but it looks like the error was SP not using the 3rd party number but still using your reading.

Both sides should have been using the 'wrong' reading, not the one you took...

My Grandpa would say, "two wrongs, don't make a right".

How times have changed.

Energy companys have become ungloryfied book keepers, whose only job is to issue incorrect bills.

They don't own a single power station, just a wonky computer in a garage or shed and maybe a post box number.