Eon threatening to cut off electric soon if money isn't paid

Farway

Is your uncle registered with them as vulnerable due to age or whatever? If not now would perhaps be a good time to get it done for him

km1500

Good suggestion from @faraway

[Deleted User]

From the Citizens Advice webpage:

Check if your supplier is allowed to disconnect you

If you've reached State Pension age, your supplier can't disconnect you between 1 October and 31 March if either:

• you live alone

• you only live with other people who have reached State Pension age or children under 18 years old

You can check your State Pension age on GOV.UK.

In some situations your supplier must offer you support before they disconnect you. For example they might help you set up a payment plan. This applies between 1 October and 31 March each year if someone you live with:

• has reached State Pension age

• is disabled

• has a long-term physical or mental health condition - for example, diabetes or depression

If this applies to you, contact your supplier to let them know.

mrsg1990

We have just spoken to him, the bill is in the name of our uncle's dad, my husband's grandfather, who died in 1990.

mrsg1990

He pays by direct debit, so why are they asking for money and threatening for cut him off?

Brie

mrsg1990 said:

We have just spoken to him, the bill is in the name of our uncle's dad, my husband's grandfather, who died in 1990.

So technically your uncle doesn't owe any of the money.  I doubt the energy provider will see it that way of course.

It may be possible to do things without visiting uncle if both you and your other half can coordinate a phone call with the energy provider.  I'm thinking if you ring them up and when you are finally talking to someone your OH phones uncle and then there's a 3 way conversation where uncle can give permission for you/OH to deal with things on his behalf and set up an online account.  

It is, however, possible that the provider will want sight of uncle's dad's death certificate in order to move the account to uncle's name.  

Robin9

mrsg1990 said:

He pays by direct debit, so why are they asking for money and threatening for cut him off?

Quite possibly because the DD is too little .   Once you have sight of that bill I'm sure all will be clear. 

Brie

Gone back to the original post and wanted to add a couple of comments as I'm with Eon so know what their bills look like.

They do get very threatening when they want the DD to increase.  They pretend it's something they are doing for your own protection ("we don't want you to get into debt with us") and so say a big increase is required as the end result could be termination of the services.  I got one of these by email a few months back.

The problem is that they completely fabricated my annual use estimate stating it was much higher than was true, even though they had actual accurate readings.  This is when they were getting aggressive about changing my DD from £120 to nearly £300 a month.  I had to do my own annual calculation and told that that £120 was more than adequate which since I could prove that they had to leave my DD at £120.

Second problem is that they messed up on the credit currently being applied to electric bills.  Instead of crediting me £66 they added it to my outstanding account - effectively putting me into arrears due to their poor accounting.  It took a couple of strongly worded emails to get them to sort it out - which they did.  But it's something they have likely done to others who haven't understood what should be happening - they should in fact be lowering the normal DD by £66 for the first 2 months and then £67 for the next 4 months.  

[Deleted User]

They do get very threatening when they want the DD to increase.  They pretend it's something they are doing for your own protection ("we don't want you to get into debt with us") and so say a big increase is required as the end result could be termination of the services. 

In fairness to the supplier, it was not to know that the account holder had been dead for 32 years or the present occupant could be deemed vulnerable unless someone informed them. When I last looked at the Ofgem statistics there had not been a consumer meter disconnection for some years. Suppliers now default to pre-payment meters.

macman

Brie said:

mrsg1990 said:

We have just spoken to him, the bill is in the name of our uncle's dad, my husband's grandfather, who died in 1990.

So technically your uncle doesn't owe any of the money.  I doubt the energy provider will see it that way of course.

It may be possible to do things without visiting uncle if both you and your other half can coordinate a phone call with the energy provider.  I'm thinking if you ring them up and when you are finally talking to someone your OH phones uncle and then there's a 3 way conversation where uncle can give permission for you/OH to deal with things on his behalf and set up an online account.  

It is, however, possible that the provider will want sight of uncle's dad's death certificate in order to move the account to uncle's name.  

Yes he does, because he is the occupier, presumably since 1990. You can't avoid liability for the bill just because you never put the account into your name.
No they will not require a death cert!
The supplier doesn't give a d*mn whose name the account is in, or whether it corresponds to the name on the DD, as long as payments are being made.
The OP needs to get sight of the letter and a recent bill, all else is just speculation.
What is depressing is that the OP's uncle has probably been on SVT for more than 30 years, which means that many thousands of pounds have been paid out unnecessarily in expensive tariffs.