Eonnext vanishing credit - anyone else had this?

[Deleted User]

Konsufed said:

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.

The monthly statements that you see are what many people call 'bills'.  The statement (that are downloadable from your online account as per picture) will only be your 'bill' if you pay the balance off via Variable Direct Debit (which I do).  A little like your bank statement which will show debits (energy consumption converted into £) and credits ( £ money going in such as direct debits).  Seldom will anyone's current bank account show £0 unless they are in the habit of transferring money to/from a saver account daily.

The usage data on my statements clearly state the start reading and end reading of both utilities and a calculation of the account debits that are raised on your account (shown as gas and electricity on your transactions tab), and credits that are applied (e.g. HMG payments of £66/£67 and Direct Debits paid by yourself) during the period of the statement.  A balance is then shown which will certainly influence your future Direct Debit payments.

Hope you are able to fathom our where the credit has gone.  My gut feeling is that debits have been generated that cancel out what you thought may have been a healthy credit.

Just ensure that the meter reads used for the statements correspond with your actual meter reads and I'd reccommend always submitting the manual reads at the appropriate date every month (whenever that is). 

Konsufed

PhilHornby said:

Konsufed said:

Re. PhilHornby's comment:

I have given up trying to make sense of their statements & bills - and have taken a different approach.

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'm not automatically assuming Eon are wrong, all I want is an explanation because their numbers (to me at least) don't make sense. 

I used to habitually reconcile my statements each month, until I encountered Symbio - when it all stopped making sense. When they went bust, E.ON Next picked up where they left off 

The arithmetic involved shouldn't really tax a 9 year old, and they've got a computer to give them a hand    

Ditto (ex Symbio also myself).

To quote an old saying:  To Err is Human; To Really Foul Things Up Requires a Computer.

The difficulty I have is that I have two data sets, the bill/statements and monthly email reminders and neither references the other and they give wildly conflicting credits despite Eon generating both from (presumably) the same data.  That said, I am coming to the conclusion that the healthy credit was an illusion and, sadly, in reality I don't have the credit I thought I have.  Eon seem stuck in insisting I send them a photo of my meter reading despite my query involving historical data?

I'll send them a piccie and see what happens.

It seems to me that having an email reminder stating one credit value and having another, different one in the online monthly bill/statement is very confusing/misleading.  At the very least a note in the email reminder saying something to the effect that the credit shown may be an overestimate because payment for electricity usage prior to this date (of the email) may not have yet been debited.

I'm fairly sure that's what's happened here - but getting Eon to confirm this and "show their working" is still in progress...

Thanks for the support and feedback, it's appreciated!

Konsufed

[Deleted User] said:

... Hope you are able to fathom our where the credit has gone.  My gut feeling is that debits have been generated that cancel out what you thought may have been a healthy credit....

Thanks for your patience and also for taking the trouble to explain further.

As I mentioned in my reply to PhilHornby I am coming around to your view.

Ah well, best send them a piccie of my meter reading...

[Deleted User]

I think I know what your isssue might be.

The last time I submitted manual meter reads was October 1st.  I got an email stating that they had received the meter readings and in it was stated a balance at that time (i.e October 1st).  The balance now included the electricity £ usage but not the gas £ usage (because they don't know that for maybe another day or two).  Neither did this balance include the BEIS £67 payment although this appeared within a day or two on my account and before the bill generation happened after the gas £ had been worked out.  BUT the actual statement that was generated on 2nd October did include the gas £ usage but not the BEIS payment (that appeared as a credit on a subsequent statement later in October).

All very confusing I know but my advice to you would be to ignore the email balance after you give them any manual reads as this is just a balance (at a date often different to the statement generation) and just keep a check on the transactions that appear in your account and, if needs be, check each of these off your following statement much as you would do with a bank statement and a pocket full of till receipts.

So for December, my transactions include both gas and electricity £ usage amounts but not the BEIS payment (has appeared within a couple of days of the 1st of the month).  My statement (received today) also reflects this.  I'm not at all worried and am confidant that the billing is 100% accurate.   

Konsufed

[Deleted User] said:

I think I know what your isssue might be.
...

So for December, my transactions include both gas and electricity £ usage amounts but not the BEIS payment (has appeared within a couple of days of the 1st of the month).  My statement (received today) also reflects this.  I'm not at all worried and am confidant that the billing is 100% accurate.   

Thanks for the thought - I'm just paying for elec so there's no gas payments muddying the waters for me.

No reply from Eon yet, but yes, I suspect those credits are a "snapshot" rather than "money in the bank" as it were.

Fingers crossed I get something coherent and rational from Eon soon...

Konsufed

Hi all, the saga continues.

Seems that Eon's only way to "resolve" the issue is to keep issuing the same irrelevant and unhelpful response.

Basically they say "here's your latest bill which shows your current credit" which wasn't what I asked.

I thought this would be a simple query but sadly not so.

I've put a lot more time and energy into this than I expected/wanted and it's now a point of principle: I want Eon to answer my question (i.e. reconcile the two credits so I can be sure no monies have gone missing) or realise they can't and do something about that.

I'll post here from time to time as stuff happens.

Jyana

I'm not sure I understand. You can't work out where your money has gone from looking at your bill? If you can redact sensitive parts of it and post it here and some helpful posters here may be able to help with it.

SaverRate

Konsufed said:

Hi all, the saga continues.

Seems that Eon's only way to "resolve" the issue is to keep issuing the same irrelevant and unhelpful response.

Basically they say "here's your latest bill which shows your current credit" which wasn't what I asked.

I thought this would be a simple query but sadly not so.

I've put a lot more time and energy into this than I expected/wanted and it's now a point of principle: I want Eon to answer my question (i.e. reconcile the two credits so I can be sure no monies have gone missing) or realise they can't and do something about that.

I'll post here from time to time as stuff happens.

If Eon are saying its correct, its down to you to disprove it. To do this as others have said you need to go through your statements and work it out. Wouldn't surprise me if they have calculated everything correctly! But would be interesting to know the outcome. 

If your not going to this yourself I don't see why others on here should bother! 

molerat

The two things I think could be a bit confusing is they bill at full unit price then deduct the 17p discount separately and the final billed amount does not tie up with the on line electricity amount as they deduct the £66 within the bill and in the on line statement it is the full amount and the £66 listed separately. The PDF bills are pretty clear once you have figured that out  Their on line account offers a blow by blow list of credits and debits so is very easy to follow.  Apart from that I can't see that there is anything in the least odd about their billing.  EDF on the other hand ........

Konsufed

Jyana said:

I'm not sure I understand. You can't work out where your money has gone from looking at your bill? If you can redact sensitive parts of it and post it here and some helpful posters here may be able to help with it.

Hi and thanks for replying.

The problem I have is that neither set of figures references the other.  I can trace through the statement and the figures and sums so their arithmetic is correct.

After a huge amount of back-and-forth I have just received another two-line "This is the situation.  Now go away." reply but at least they admit they made a mistake.  However they still have not answered my query which was "If these figures disagree, which is correct?  Please explain how to reconcile these."

There's a load of stuff I could post but I'll try and keep it brief.

From a previous email I sent to EOn:

First off I checked the arithmetic of my statement and, unsurprisingly, I agreed with your figures.

So, here's an example (I appreciate these figures may have been superceded by subsequent meter readings but they will do to illustrate my point):

On my statement it says: On 24th Nov. 2022 your new balance was £62.71 CR

I can easily replicate this from the statement, that was really just a sanity check.

Now the direct debit reminder emails before and after that date had credits of:

email dated 7 November 2022 my credit was £1,378.94 CR

email dated 7 November 2022 my credit was £86.31 CR

I.e. a drop of £1292.63!

Now as I understand my statement at that point (24th Nov.) I had already paid for everything up to 30th September 2022 when I was charged £602.14 leaving me 58.13 in credit according to my statement (I'm comfortable that this is correct based on the numbers used to calculate it).

Yet according to the following direct debit reminder I am over £1300 in credit and a month later after paying a further £210.70 this credit is reduced to £62.71 in the statement and £86.31 in the next direct debit reminder.  So you hopefully see why I want to understand that the statement hasn't lost or omitted any credit and to do that I'd like to know how and where these credits came from.  Like I said I just want reassurance that no monies have gone missing!

So I hope I have clarified my query and would ask again if someone can explain how to reconcile the email direct debit credits with the statement figures to reassure me that no credit has been overlooked/mislaid please.

I do not need to be again informed that my statement is up to date.  I simply want to understand how the various numbers produced by your statement and direct debt reminders can be reconciled.  This may not be part of your job remit in which case please escalate.  If it is then please get back to me with at least an explanation of how these two systems (statements and direct debit reminders) can produce such vastly different outputs and ideally how the figures marry up in my case so I am reassured no credit has been lost or overlooked.

And the reply from Eon:

Regards to your email I have looked to your account, We apologize for the inconvenient that may have caused, The reminder you received were incorrect looking at your account and investigating further. However as I did say that after submitting correct readings you were then billet accordingly.

However they still ask me to simply accept this without evidence or explanation.  That said the statement does include a credit from my old Symbio account (which seems about right) and all payments since then do add up and look correct so I am in all honesty inclined to believe the statement.  But it would have been good if they could have taken the trouble to explain how this happened so I could be reassured that the statement is indeed correct rather than just trusting that they are right this time, honest...

I also don't think the direct debit reminders should include a snapshot of the account credit/debit unless this figure is also incorporated in the statement so that the snapshot can be viewed in context.  To me at least there was no easy way to regenerate these snapshots from the statement.  Especially so if they were wrong...

Anyway, I'll mull over whether or not to continue the conversation - I'd really like to have an explanation but I doubt Eon are capable/willing of doing this.  I'm leaning towards suggesting that they somehow provide a mechanism for customers to reconcile/cross-reference the reminder credit/debit snapshots with the statement values.  But it will probably just be an utter waste of my time...

All thoughts/suggestions welcome!