E.ON topups inoperative lately

AndyCF

I do realise there's a longer term payment upgrade either to be started or in progress but I've not been able to topup since Friday.

Anyone else in the same boat here perhaps ?

I did not want to tie up a phone line if they were helping people who were off supply , however I will be by tomorrow as despite a few attempts there's no progress it seems so far, and obviously being a Sunday = no phone staff.

There is something slightly ironic/strange in this as its only a few days/weeks ago the Smart E-Credit level for 'elec only' was dropped from 20 to 5 , I do wonder if that had been left alone for a few more weeks (at least until the payment issues were sorted in a few months) then there would be less of a manic phone queue now in the week as customers would have more E.Credit to last them a few more days. Merely co-incidence I think.

A neighbour did say "it was a bit cruel" to make the EC change during Winter, I've an open mind on that as I do not think anyone sat around a table and thought "lets do this at a high energy use quarter" , it was simply a business / financial decision so I have no ill feeling about this, however I can slightly understand why some may. It is a shame it could not of been held back until Spring or Summer but it is what it is. It could be worse, the min topup (see what happened to B.Gas) could be changed I suppose.

To be 100% the topup system is very good (both automated phone and online) when it functions as it should. There is a big concern however in that if you have cash in hand but you are out of Post Office hours (which may be short due to Covid etc) you are out of luck whereas the legacy key/token there are no shortages of places to go with said item. I do hope in the future that it may be possible to allow more outlets to serve topup vouchers and perhaps even have said voucher to contain a valid vend code rather than a topup, this way one can enter the code directly without a phone or computer to hand.

AndyCF

For anyone else who is/was waiting to do this before 11am (cut off time)

I was not able to get it to work via the automated phone line , it wanted to put me through to a person before I got to choose how muc to pay, however the webpage (I don't have the app to try that) does function fine but you need to manually enter your card details as they are no longer saved as per their upgrade message.

So I'd suggest online method if possible for now, the notes about delays applying it are still present but that's expected and online rather than automated phone which may try to transfer you to a person would save the bother of tying up someone who could be helping someone who is off supply etc.

E.ON_Company_Representative

AndyCF said:

For anyone else who is/was waiting to do this before 11am (cut off time)

I was not able to get it to work via the automated phone line , it wanted to put me through to a person before I got to choose how muc to pay, however the webpage (I don't have the app to try that) does function fine but you need to manually enter your card details as they are no longer saved as per their upgrade message.

So I'd suggest online method if possible for now, the notes about delays applying it are still present but that's expected and online rather than automated phone which may try to transfer you to a person would save the bother of tying up someone who could be helping someone who is off supply etc.

Morning Andy, I'm glad to hear you managed to get it sorted. I do apologise for the inconvenience.

As you know in the event of any issues with the online system we tend to recommend using the automated line in the first instance. I checked this over the weekend for another customer who was having the same problems and it did indeed go straight through to an advisor rather than allowing me to key in information. We're working to get this fixed. It's very noble of you to not take up advisor time when it's not quite an emergency yet but if the credit is ever getting low and you can't top up please don't have any qualms about getting in touch.

I'm not too sure on the exact thought process behind changing the emergency credit limit, although as strange as it may seem we have done this to help customers. Back at the start of the first lockdown we changed the emergency credit limit on our standard Prepayment meters to £50 in an effort to help those who couldn't go out. This actually backfired a little bit with regards to customers having to top up £50 + £1 to get back on supply. We tend to find that customers who frequently use/rely on the full emergency credit limit correlates with those who top up in smaller amounts and may encounter financial difficulty. We're trying to change the thought processes to have the £5 available for emergencies, rather than being relied on and used in full every time. Hopefully the change wasn't too much of an inconvenience. 

As you reference you have the "friendly hours" from 4pm to 11am on Smart PAYG meters so this should help mitigate any problems that may arise when our advisors aren't available to help. 

For the most part it should all be back to normal from today but you know where to find us if needs be. If you top up online and it doesn't reach your meter(s) within 35 minutes you'll be texted/emailed with a code to enter manually on your meter. 

Thanks, Matt