Eonnext vanishing credit - anyone else had this?

Konsufed

Hello,

for many months my direct debit reminders incuded a mention of my account credit.  This was high (over £1,000) and slowly increasing.

I intended to do something about this when the government aid kicked in, which it duly did.

I also received my annual statement in late November (2022) saying my October credit was zero and my November credit just a few quid.

They seem to have lost over a £1,000 of credit

I didn't save any bills or statements since I had their reminders...

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...and besides have a lot of ongoing hassle domestic hassles that sap my time and energy.

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I'm currently in discussion with Eonnext and have sent them the reminder emails, so fingers crossed they can cross reference and track back to where my credit has gone.

Trouble is, these last 3 emails are the only solid proof I have that my account is in credit (and has been for ages).

I regularly send in meter readings and so there's been no long term underpayments etc.

Just wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience?

Thanks in advance for sharing!

Jyana

What does your latest bill show has happened to the credit?

Brie

their accounting is dismal.  They needed to apply a credit to my account and debited it instead.  basic arithmetic error.  supposedly by a computer.

[Deleted User]

Konsufed said:

I didn't save any bills or statements since I had their reminders...

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...and besides have a lot of ongoing hassle domestic hassles that sap my time and energy.

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If you have an online account you can download any bill/statement in pdf format.  Perhaps they will show what has happened to this lost money?

MWT

Usually this problem is the result of low estimated billing followed by a higher accurate bill following a meter reading.

The answer will be detailed in the bills though, not the reminders...

ariarnia

DerwentMailman said:

Konsufed said:

I didn't save any bills or statements since I had their reminders...

[off_topic]

...and besides have a lot of ongoing hassle domestic hassles that sap my time and energy.

[/off_topic]

If you have an online account you can download any bill/statement in pdf format.  Perhaps they will show what has happened to this lost money?

or ask them to send you copies of the bills. 

i agree with mwt that it could be them using an estemate then your actual reading for the bill (just because you give monthly readings doesn't always mean there automatic systems use them)

my first thought is are you actually billed quarterly or 6 monthly (you can pay a monthly dd which goes into an account and builds up until a bill is created) as that would explain a high credit followed by that credit 'disappearing' 

sorry to say but you DO really need those bills if we have any hope of helping you work out what happened. 

[Deleted User]

E.ON Next's accounting makes dearly departed Symbio look good!

That’s strange given that E.oN Next uses a billing platform purchased/leased from Kraken Technologies (part of the Octopus Energy Group).  Kraken is now used by a number of UK energy suppliers, and suppliers in the USA; Germany; Japan; Italy and New Zealand (I may have missed a few).

badmemory

Just because a lot of companies use something it really does not make it good.  I will not even comment on BGs new platform.  Most of them appear to have nothing less than dire processes

born_again

Create a online account ALL statements & payments are listed. As well as a simple summery stating what you are paying & the balance (cr or dr)

Then remember to send meter readings each month, so you are only paying for what you use, not what they estimate.

stewie_griffin

Do you have a Smart meter and if not have you been providing regular meter readings? What do you mean by annual statement? I provide readings once a month and get a statement shortly after. If you’ve not had a statement for a year then this will explain where your credit has now gone.

Konsufed

First off, thank you to everyone who took the trouble to reply, it's much appreciated.

Payments are monthly direct debits.

I send meter readings most months and estimated bills are rare.

I dont have (and really don't want) a smart meter.

I can't find a record of bills issued in my account, only monthly statements (date, amount paid and balance but no usage data), DerwentMailman said it was possible to download actual bills so it's probably me being stupid.

Re. ariarnia's comment:

...my first thought is are you actually billed quarterly or 6 monthly (you can pay a monthly dd which goes into an account and builds up until a bill is created) as that would explain a high credit followed by that credit 'disappearing'

I'd assumed everything was done monthly, but not so: didn't realise until I looked at the monthly statements... d'oh!

Actual payments (money going out) are made infrequently, once every 3 or 6 months.

So thanks for a helpful prod.

I rather suspect this is what's happened but I still struggle to see how the various credits fit together in a coherent whole, e.g. August 2022 reminder email credit is about £1,000 whereas the monthly statement credit is barely half of that?

I imagine that one is a "snapshot" and the other a cumulative/running total but the relationship isn't obvious (to me at least).

I've downloaded and saved the statement payments and a few email reminder credits and will try and get some sense out of them.

Re. PhilHornby's comment:

I have given up trying to make sense of their statements & bills - and have taken a different approach. If you know the starting point, the unit rates, the amount you've paid them and the time elapsed, it's trivial to work out what state your account is actually in. Of course, you have to account for the changes in rates due to the various cap changes along the way - but Excel makes this simple.

Thanks for the suggestion, though I really don't want to have to calculate my usage - that part of what I pay Eon to do - but if that's what needs to be done guess I'll have to.  I'll wait and see what Eon come back with first.

However during my poking I found the messages section which listed the emails Eon had sent to me (I hadn't properly explored the web site due to lack of interest/time/energy etc.).  Another helpful prod!

I'm not automatically assuming Eon are wrong, all I want is an explanation because their numbers (to me at least) don''t make sense.  Many companies have billing systems that seem designed to obfuscate rather than explain...

Not heard back from Eon yet, will let you know how  get on when I do.

I think my next step, having digested all your kind advice, is probably to try and get Eon (don't see why I should do the work) to unravel and correlate their two sets of credits (monthly statements vs email reminders) since they have all the data already.

Hope the above makes sense (brain's a bit mushy/overheating just now.)

I'll let you know how I get on.

Thanks again to all those who responded.