EON Energy and Backbilling

[Deleted User]

niktheguru said:

Sounds like the OP is trying to chance their luck to get free energy. Here's a genuine question, if EON ask you if they can install smart meters in your property, will you be agreeing or refusing? That way this wont happen again! :-) 

Sadly, like a lot of Government interventions (Ofgem is a non Ministerial Govt Department) no one thought through the possible unintended consequences of Back Billing. I think that the E.oN rep has eloquently explained why the Back Billing rules need to amplified to avoid any confusion. 

MWT

Much as it pains me to agree in some part with the OP, and disagree with the E.ON rep, a customer most certainly can fail to provide meter readings and if the supplier fails to do anything about it they can end up paying less than they should for their energy.

This is a sad situation as the rest of us who do pay for what we use end up footing the bill through higher prices...

The problem is that the energy company is responsible for providing accurate billing. 

That can be by using customer readings or by sending their own meter reader, but if they are not getting readings from the customer they do have to send out a meter reader or be blocked from fixing cases of under-billing for periods beyond the last 12 months...

The rules should change and customer readings should be a reasonable expectation unless the customer registers for assistance due to incapacity of some kind.

Neil_Jones

dahr said:

I've analysed my old bills and it looks like they did apply their reading a year ago.
So I think in this case they can back-bill. Ho hum

But this is not an easy area to understand and EON employees are good at making it difficult to work out, in my experience.

BUT - as i understand it - if they fail to read/bill correctly (and the consumer hasn't been obstructive/stealing/etc) then they can NOT retrospectively bill prior to 12 months. (So, for example. 12 months ago the bill said you owe them 100 but you actually owed 150 - then they can't charge the 50). It's not the consumers job to read meters!
Thanks for inputs!

Can I respectfully suggest that repeatedly making the same point (and ignoring everybody else in the thread in the process) doesn't make what you wrote any more correct. As I wrote back billing only applies if you do everything right (including reading the meter, giving the supplier the readings and paying the money) and then Eon for whatever reason completely ignore all of that and no bill is generated for months on end.  Simple as.

There is a difference between "not being billed correctly" because no bill was generated, and "not being billed correctly" because you didn't read and give any meter readings.  The £1450 or whatever it was amount owed sounds like a catch-up bill.

I suggest rather than speaking again about back-billing, get all your previous bills out for the last 27 months and find out how many of them used estimated readings.  If you have the bills, then back-billing does not apply, and the situation is of your making.  You've used the energy, you'll have to pay for it.

dahr

Hi Neil
Neil said
" As I wrote back billing only applies if you do everything right (including reading the meter, giving the supplier the readings and paying the money) "
Ofgem seem to place the onus on the supplier to get the billing right - not the consumer :
eg "Consumers will not be at fault for failing to provide meter readings." (from ofgem-bans-suppliers-backbilling-customers-beyond-12-months)
so "do everything right" simply means you musn't obstruct access (or steal)
I'm just trying to clarify the regulations from ofgem.
I'm not advocating resisting bill paying. 
So I'm closing my case - as I said I can see now that eon have billed 12 months ago (the 'not used for billing' tag on the reading confused me) - so I don't think back-billing applies in my case.

dahr

Hi @E.ON_Company_Representative / Matt

Thanks for your help.
"If you're in contact with us then you can ask for back-billing to be looked into, as I say often it's passed over automatically."

I called twice to eon and both times met resistance about any challenge - the first time she said it's my responsibility to read the meter every month ( ? ) and the 2nd time he said he didn't think back-billing applied but neither offered any option to look at back-billing.

@E.ON_Company_Representative
"You mention there was a reading taken 2nd March 2020 but not used in billing? It would depend on the reason why this wasn't used."
It was labelled as not used in billing on my account but after looking through the account I realised that the eon system was taking the that reading into account.

I think I'm satisfied that back-billing is not an issue for me now - but it's pretty complex to analyse and I don't think eon has an interest in identifying back-billing issues - not from my experience. eg I told 1st lady "you read the meter 12 months ago so you should be getting the bills right" -- she replied "you have to read the meter". I believe this statement is plain wrong or misleading.
After poring through the records I can see that the readings were used so I'm happy to pay the account.

Neil_Jones

A supplier only has to read meters once every two years.  If you want accurate bills you should read them monthly and give them to the provider.  There are an estimated 24 million dwellings in this country, assuming one set of meters per dwelling means 65k houses would have be visited every single day to read meters to provide monthly readings in addition to everything else they do.  Not going to happen.

Hasbeen

Hi Op.
Good that you have listened to advice here and did your own investigations. Common sense prevails. 

But!  Sorry,  If you do not want similar in future, you really must check your meter readings against bills sent and supply monthly readings to get accurate statements.

If Smart meters? they are not infallible. And unlike the old days meter readers are few and far between.

So to protect yourself you actually have to do something yourself to mitigate situations like this. Its all a learning curve.   

But great you are now in a position to move forward and stop any more worries regards this. 

[Deleted User]

Neil_Jones said:

A supplier only has to read meters once every two years.  If you want accurate bills you should read them monthly and give them to the provider.  There are an estimated 24 million dwellings in this country, assuming one set of meters per dwelling means 65k houses would have be visited every single day to read meters to provide monthly readings in addition to everything else they do.  Not going to happen.

The requirement for suppliers to read meters was dropped as a Supply Licence Condition a few years ago and replaced with the following:

Quote: 21B.4 The licensee must take all reasonable steps to obtain a meter reading (including any meter reading transmitted electronically from a meter to the licensee or provided by the Customer and accepted by the licensee) for each of its Customers at least once every year.

This paragraph does not apply in relation to any Customer with a Prepayment Meter. Unquote

I appreciate that some suppliers still send out meter readers but their primary function these days is meter safety checks.

Robin9

Neil_Jones said:

A supplier only has to read meters once every two years.  If you want accurate bills you should read them monthly and give them to the provider.  There are an estimated 24 million dwellings in this country, assuming one set of meters per dwelling means 65k houses would have be visited every single day to read meters to provide monthly readings in addition to everything else they do.  Not going to happen.

It used to - the requirement was to do reads 3 out of every 4 quarterly visits.


Those were also the days when a meter reader attended for a Change of Tenancy.

Cardew

When a bill based on an estimated reading is sent out, I believe the terms and conditions, for most companies, require the customer to inform the company if that reading is incorrect; and we all accept those terms and conditions when given a tariff.

Without trawling through hundreds of pages of Eon 'small print' there are phrases like 'If you are supplied by us we'll need to make sure you're billed up to date, so you'll need to provide us with an actual meter reading.'