EonNext repeatedly overcharging.

hollytee9

I hoping someone can give me some advice relating to my energy supplier repeatedly overcharging me.

The first issue is eon repeatedly keep increasing my direct debit payment. It is set as a monthly direct debit of £240 which we stay well within. But for the third time eon have increased it, and I'm not talking about a small amount. Last year they upped to from £240 to £320 which after a few months I requested be reduced back down to the original direct debit. A few months later they again raised my DD payment to £390 per month. We ended up nearly £2000 in credit. Again I told them to reduce it back to £240 and to use the credit up. I've had another seven months where we have not exceeded our £240 monthly DD and I look on my app today and despite being nearly £400 in credit find they've increased it to £295 per month. So for the third time I've had to tell them to reduce it back to the original monthly DD amount.

This time I told the guy I spoke to at eon that I did not want my direct debit increased without my permission. but he said the system automatically sets the DD amounts, which seems insane when a customers account is already in credit.

Is there a way to stop them doing this? It's hard to budget when eon is just helping itself to whatever money they feel like taking out of our account and then that money sitting in my eon account as credit.

The second issue is, we had smart meters installed November 2022 and they fitted a faulty gas meter which was essentially dead and didn't record any usage. Despite numerous complaints, it took eon 7 months to replace the meter with a working unit. Two weeks ago they helped themselves to £590 out of our account for an "estimated" 7 months of gas, approx £82 per month). We only have two gas appliances, a combi boiler and a kitchen hob. In December 2022 our boiler died, we had no central heating or hot water for nearly 3 weeks while we had to wait for a heating engineer to fit a new one, so we used close to zero gas. We had a new eco boiler fitted and newer energy efficient radiators, which replaced 50 year old radiators, which must have a impact on the gas usage.

Since they finally fitted a working gas smart meter I now have 3 weeks of usage and can see we currently use less the 60p per day in gas, that's with three people taking showers daily, hot water for washing etc, and the gas kitchen hob being used occasionally. Approx £18 - £20 per month. Even in the cold weather with the central heating on we couldn't come close to what they estimated we used,

Again I contacted eon and they wouldn't budge. I've emailed them again asking then to reassess the charge and that unless resolved I'll escalate the matter with the energy ombudsman.

But again, and advice would be very much appreciated.

EDIT:

I don't want to have to edit my original post so I'm going to stick this here as an edit.

So this is actually worse than I thought. I mistakenly thought that the £590 eon took as a gas payment covered usage from 1st December '22 to 27th July '23, it didn't, That £590 was for estimated gas usage from 5th March '23 to 27th July '23.

Looking back the previous bills on my eon account they also took £629 on 5th March '23 for estimated gas usage from 1st December '22 to 5th March '23.

So it's twice as bad as I thought it was as they "estimated" we used £1219 in gas over 7 months, and we only had the central heating on for just over three of those months.

Update - 16/09/23

After pushing this through customer service they elevated the issue and found they had indeed over billed/charged me during those disputed 7 months.

I received a £545 refund for gas and an additional £165 refund for electricity.

So if anyone reads this and is thinking their estimated bill is wrong, I would urge you to pursue the matter. If I hadn't kept pushing this I have no doubt I would have never seen that money again.

bluelad1927

I was given ridiculous DDs on Eon next so requested I went on Variable DD which you pay monthly for the energy used. You have to be sensible about putting the money away though for the increase in winter but it works well for me. Last year Eon wanted 300 a month and my bills averaged to around half that..

I can't help with the second bit but I think I'd have been pretty much in the same boat as you being fairly low energy users relative to the size of property. Did they not have previous years of your usage to go on

hollytee9

I had no idea about variable DD, that was incredibly helpful!

I will call them ASAP and get that done. Thank you!

bluelad1927

hollytee9 said:

I had no idea about variable DD, that was incredibly helpful!

I will call them ASAP and get that done. Thank you!

I couldn't believe it when I found out. I've never actually paid a DD. As soon as I see the bill appear on the app I pay it off online.

Spoonie_Turtle

hollytee9 said:

I hoping someone can give me some advice relating to my energy supplier repeatedly overcharging me.

…

The second issue is, we had smart meters installed November 2022 and they fitted a faulty gas meter which was essentially dead and didn't record any usage. Despite numerous complaints, it took eon 7 months to replace the meter with a working unit. Two weeks ago they helped themselves to £590 out of our account for an "estimated" 7 months of gas, approx £82 per month). We only have two gas appliances, a combi boiler and a kitchen hob. In December 2022 our boiler died, we had no central heating or hot water for nearly 3 weeks while we had to wait for a heating engineer to fit a new one, so we used close to zero gas. We had a new eco boiler fitted and newer energy efficient radiators, which replaced 50 year old radiators, which must have a impact on the gas usage.

Since they finally fitted a working gas smart meter I now have 3 weeks of usage and can see we currently use less the 60p per day in gas, that's with three people taking showers daily, hot water for washing etc, and the gas kitchen hob being used occasionally. Approx £18 - £20 per month. Even in the cold weather with the central heating on we couldn't come close to what they estimated we used,

One of those uses the majority of everyone's gas usage though.  A few weeks without it working in December won't have drastically lowered your actual usage, as IIRC Jan-March last year was pretty chilly.

How many kWh are they saying you used, and how does that compare with the same time period in years past and 2022/23?

(Your 3 weeks of usage in August is no help whatsoever as even the water to be heated is warmer than in winter, this meeting less gas to heat.)

Incidentally overcharging is only if they are charging you for more than your actual usage, or charging more per unit and/or per day than they are supposed to according to the terms of your tariff.  There is no mention of that latter, and the former you need actual evidence to be able to dispute - such as how many units they're charging for, and comparison with previous years.  The more knowledgeable regulars here will be able to give you some idea of whether the new boiler and radiators will truly have made a significant difference or not.

CSI_Yorkshire

hollytee9 said:

I hoping someone can give me some advice relating to my energy supplier repeatedly overcharging me.

The first issue is eon repeatedly keep increasing my direct debit payment. It is set as a monthly direct debit of £240 which we stay well within. But for the third time eon have increased it, and I'm not talking about a small amount. Last year they upped to from £240 to £320 which after a few months I requested be reduced back down to the original direct debit. A few months later they again raised my DD payment to £390 per month. We ended up nearly £2000 in credit. Again I told them to reduce it back to £240 and to use the credit up. I've had another seven months where we have not exceeded our £240 monthly DD and I look on my app today and despite being nearly £400 in credit find they've increased it to £295 per month. So for the third time I've had to tell them to reduce it back to the original monthly DD amount.

This is not overcharging.  Your direct debit is not your bill and is not how much you have been charged.

hollytee9 said:

Since they finally fitted a working gas smart meter I now have 3 weeks of usage and can see we currently use less the 60p per day in gas, that's with three people taking showers daily, hot water for washing etc, and the gas kitchen hob being used occasionally. Approx £18 - £20 per month. Even in the cold weather with the central heating on we couldn't come close to what they estimated we used,

My gas usage in the summer is about £20 per month.  In the winter it is about £200.  Quite easy to average £82 per month when winter is involved.

hollytee9 said:

Again I contacted eon and they wouldn't budge. I've emailed them again asking then to reassess the charge and that unless resolved I'll escalate the matter with the energy ombudsman.

If you do, don't call it overcharging, call it an excessive direct debit, and have specific accurate evidence rather that "surely it can't be that much".  The Ombudsman doesn't investigate, it just reviews factual submissions from both sides to make a decision.

NorfolkCanary

hollytee9 said:

I had no idea about variable DD, that was incredibly helpful!

I will call them ASAP and get that done. Thank you!

Just to echo the comments on ensuring money is put aside, as a fairly low energy user, during the previous 12 months my monthly VDD was between £40 & £233 (inc. govt. discount), of which the majority will be gas uage and SC.

Scot_39

bluelad1927 said:

hollytee9 said:

I had no idea about variable DD, that was incredibly helpful!

I will call them ASAP and get that done. Thank you!

I couldn't believe it when I found out. I've never actually paid a DD. As soon as I see the bill appear on the app I pay it off online.

If you don't pay by DD - are you then paying standard credit rates - which are roughly 10% higher ?

Edit 

Or is it enough just to have the arrangement in place in case you don't pay the balance down to zero ?

hollytee9

CSI_Yorkshire said:

hollytee9 said:

I hoping someone can give me some advice relating to my energy supplier repeatedly overcharging me.

The first issue is eon repeatedly keep increasing my direct debit payment. It is set as a monthly direct debit of £240 which we stay well within. But for the third time eon have increased it, and I'm not talking about a small amount. Last year they upped to from £240 to £320 which after a few months I requested be reduced back down to the original direct debit. A few months later they again raised my DD payment to £390 per month. We ended up nearly £2000 in credit. Again I told them to reduce it back to £240 and to use the credit up. I've had another seven months where we have not exceeded our £240 monthly DD and I look on my app today and despite being nearly £400 in credit find they've increased it to £295 per month. So for the third time I've had to tell them to reduce it back to the original monthly DD amount.

This is not overcharging.  Your direct debit is not your bill and is not how much you have been charged.

hollytee9 said:

Since they finally fitted a working gas smart meter I now have 3 weeks of usage and can see we currently use less the 60p per day in gas, that's with three people taking showers daily, hot water for washing etc, and the gas kitchen hob being used occasionally. Approx £18 - £20 per month. Even in the cold weather with the central heating on we couldn't come close to what they estimated we used,

My gas usage in the summer is about £20 per month.  In the winter it is about £200.  Quite easy to average £82 per month when winter is involved.

I think saying it's "not overcharging" is open to debate. The fact is eon are taking money from my bank account that is far in excess of the energy I am using. Having £2000 of my money sitting in an eon account as credit is pretty much inexcusable. The direct debit I agreed to was £240 per month, as a household we go moderately above that usage in the depths of winter, but the credit we accumulate during the summer easily covers the winter bills.

My issue was eon unilaterally and repeatedly raising my DD for no legitimate reason and without my consent. Over course of 12 months my account is in debit about two or three months of the year, the other 9 or 10 months it's in credit. I could understand if my account was constantly in debit, but it not.

As for the large gas bill... The bill covered "estimated usage" from 1st December '22 to 27th July '23. Looking back on the stats on the app from our our Hive thermostat, I turned off the central heating on 11th March '23, so the central heating was only on for 3 of those 7 months.

Also, it's my fault for not mentioning that the gas central heating isn't the only thing we rely on for heating, we have a wood burning stove that provides the bulk of our heating, the gas central heating is used much more passively. Even in December when our boiler died, the annoying thing was not having hot water, the wood stove chucks out so much heat we were hardly freezing.

Qyburn

hollytee9 said:

Last year they upped to from £240 to £320 which after a few months I requested be reduced back down to the original direct debit. A few months later they again raised my DD payment to £390 per month. We ended up nearly £2000 in credit.

Depending on the detail that suggests £390 may have been higher than your usage over that time

hollytee9 said:

Again I told them to reduce it back to £240 and to use the credit up. I've had another seven months where we have not exceeded our £240 monthly DD and I look on my app today and despite being nearly £400 in credit find they've increased it to £295 per month. 

Dropping to £240 used up £1600 of credit in seven months, so it look like £240 was way too low over that period.

How often do you get actual bills showing actual usage, do they do these every month? Can you work out your actual usage (not spend) over a 12 month period? Spend over the last Winter was reduced by the Government hand outs which aren't expected to continue.

Mstty

Within reason the energy supplier can set your direct debit monthly payments based on historic usage for the property.

This is the situation we found ourselves in with Eon.

We knew following our reduction in energy that we would use approx 6200kwh a year and based out DD on that figure. When Eon upped the DD monthly £40 above our figure I had to query this. Eventually found out they were basing it on historic usage of the house and not my actual last year with them which was 6200kwh.

In the end I had to raise a complaint, they reduced the DD down to what I wanted in the first place(after quite a bit of back and forth) and as I had been through 5 customer service representatives by the time it got fixed I lodges a complaint, they didn't offer me a deadlock letter, took it to he ombudsman and they awarded us £75 for extremely poor customer service because it took 5 people to do a basic calculation on our previous year's usage.

We then left and joined Octopus.