Sudden credit to debit on electricity bill

BensonBlue

I have just received an energy statement email from E.ON Next telling me I am now £591.13 in debt. I do not have a smart meter and only have electric storage heaters. I have been sending in actual meter readings regularly and checking each month to see if I was in credit. The last time I sent in a meter reading, on 5/11/22, and checked my account it was telling me I was over £600 pound in credit. This credit has been steadily going up each month ever since I was transferred back to E.ON after my previous one went bust. Obviously, with the recent price increases I have been checking carefully and thinking I was in credit I didn’t increase the amounts I was paying each month. Having checked my account just now I can see that there is now no evidence telling me I was in credit by so much and it is now only saying I am so much in debt.

I am absolutely appalled to suddenly be faced with being nearly £600 pound in debt when I could have averted this by paying more each month if I’d been given the correct figures.

I don't understand how I can suddenly go from being so much in credit one month (after sending in ACTUAL METER READINGS, not estimates) to being so much in debt?

Has anyone else had this happen to them? What was the outcome?

Thanks for any advice any of you have.

Brie

have you submitted the correct numbers?  Have they used the correct ones?  Either now or in the past.  Simplest explanation is that someone (you or them) has made a mistake.

cymruchris

Can you see your meter reading history anywhere? Can you check that the numbers go up each month as you'd expect - or whether there was a big jump in the last reading compared to the ones that came before it? It's possible that you might have entered the wrong reading. Can you go check what the current reading is, and compare that to the one you last put in? (It's possible you made an error on entry with the last reading)

On-the-coast

Is there a chance that the actual billing cycle is quarterly (even though your DD is monthly). This has happened to me with at least one energy company - it can show you in credit more (or less) than the reality of your usage

MattMattMattUK

EON Next operate a three month billing cycle, so your balance goes up for three months and at the end of the third month they generate a bill which reconciles your usage against the monthly Direct Debits. If you look at the most recent bill on your account it show payments in against usage and give a balance.

There is also the possibility that the move from Eon to Eon Next caused an issue, that there has been an adjustment to the opening read and/or debt from the SoLR move, or other potential errors.

EssexHebridean

The only potential advantage to switching to BG once you’ve got the initial setup with EDF done is that I assume they run on monthly billing whereas EDF do 6 monthly which is a PITA.

matelodave

I send in a meter reading every month to EoN-Next . A statement then appears on my on-line account a day or so after my reading showing how much it costs how much my DD is and how much I owe or am owed. I always check it against the meter to ensure that the reading they are using is correct

Although the statements are all sitting there on the E0n server, together with all the meter readings that I've sent them, I always download the monthly statement and save it as a PDF file, just in case summat goes wrong.

It can save a lot of hassle trying to sort the bones out of any queries in the future if you've got your own records to check

stewie_griffin

Can you post a copy of your latest bill OP (redacted to remove any private info) as this will help us work out what’s happened.

macman

Were you in debt with your previous supplier, and has this debt now been applied to your new account?

Robin9

BensonBlue said:

................ I was over £600 pound in credit. This credit has been steadily going up each month ever since I was transferred back to E.ON after my previous one went bust. 

Were you expecting to be in credit ?

BensonBlue

Thanks all for your replies. I came across from my previous supplier with credit so that's not the cause. I've looked at the meter readings and they all look correct. Now, having looked at the breakdown of all the costs I was obviously paying way to little each month and yet it was still telling me I was in credit on my online account, until now. It says on the energy statement that was emailed to me that "These charges are based on estimated meter readings". However, I have been sending them actual meter readings and they have a log off them when I look at my account online. So confusing and misleading when it had been saying I was in credit but actually I think i was getting more and more into debit.