E-on increasing my Direct Debit when in Credit

TCDSTM18

Hello,

I have had my direct debit (DD) changed to £126.07/month by E-on without my consent even though I am £24.80 in credit on my account. Please see the attachment below. E-on also sent a letter to me saying my DD needed to increase but made no mention they'd actually changed it.

Has this happened to anyone else and does E-on have any right to increase my DD without my consent when I am already £24.80 in credit?

Kind regards,

Theo

la531983

With all due respect, £24.80 is a tiny amount of credit when we are just about to head into winter. Generally people build up a decent credit in summer to use in the winter. That amount of credit could be swallowed up in 3 or 4 cold days.


Post up your annual usage, along with your unit rates, and someone can tell you if it sounds reasonable.  You already gave them "consent" to amend your payments (with notice) by signing up to the billing terms.

[Deleted User]

You gave your consent to a variable DD when you signed up to the tariff. I agree that £24.80 is very little as we head into Winter. Your supplier will have looked at your past energy usage over a year and made an annual cost  judgement based on its assessment of future costs. It will have deducted the £24.80 credit from this amount and then divided the total by 12. For example if your annual cost was assessed to be £1464 per year then your DD would be set at (£1464-24)/12 = £120 per month.

If you are unhappy with the change then ask your supplier if you can move to variable DD payments based on your actual monthly charges. If you do this you can expect some high payments over the Winter months falling back as Spring arrives.

molerat

With Eon Next you can reduce the DD by 10% in your on line account.

rp1974

Welcome OP,as stated your credit balance is virtually non existent in real terms,probably has been set too low previously,particularly in view that summer should be the period of least useage and lowest bills,therefore needs adjustment,which Eon have done.
Possibly worth reading the terms and conditions that you agreed to when joining Eon which will state the position regarding DD variations,if you can budget for it contact customer services,preferably using live chat,email instead of a phone call and ask to be moved to whole bill payment Direct Debit.
Might not be the best move for you though moving into the Autumn/Winter period of probably maximum usage and biggest bills considering your already small credit balance and likely too low payment amount.

Rodders53

What have Eon increase the DD from??  e.g. £100 to £126 may not be stupidly high?

What do Eon estimate you will use annually (kWh) and what do your records show you actually use each year?  If roughly the same then EOn have done a sum that should be roughly correct (though I reckoned they always tried to take about a 10% extra on the month DD).

EOn produce a bill every time you give them a manual meter read.  Do that to get an accurate balance as of today.

You can, with some perseverance move to variable DD pay after a Bill is produced monthly if that will suit you better?

jimjames

If you're not happy paying an increased DD when you have a credit balance then you can switch to paying monthly DD based on usage instead. Downside is that you might have a bill in the summer of £20 and in the winter of £400 so you need to be quite organised to ensure you can pay that.

comeandgo

That’s a tiny amount in credit and you’ve probably used up the credit since your last direct debit was taken.  If your heating is electric you are going to need to increase your dd and you did give eon permission to increase it.  They have done what they legally need to do by advising you in advance that they are going to increase it.

Scot_39

We are in Sept and you should have been building up credit in an annualised DD plan to offset winters higher bills.

Assuming that is that EOn credit Includes your heating source.

So not just electric when say have say gas central heating with gas from another supplier etc.

If that includes heating - then £126 is still pretty low use even for a small flat / single occupancy.

And £24 credit - a fifth of that - tiny for this time of year. 

And you don't show when the last usage - even monthly was deducted cf when you paid last DD.  Which swings my credit balance around twice per month as taken on different dates.

My heating pushes cold winter months to 2.5 mild,  near 3.5x cold cf summer - and would expect a dd around just under 2x summer use as a result.  But others use far more heat then me.
 
But yes EOn Next do have your permission to set the annualised DD to ensure you remain nominally debt free over the year.

So yes they can legally vary it - up in your case.

(But if leads to excessive credit you can phone - even sometimes online in my case when credit reached c£300  - claim a refund.)

Radically down in mine. Right now my DD is actually set by them within 60p of last months use to use up that £300 credit built up due to epg rate discounts.  The credit won't last much beyond Dec, Jan at that rate in a more typical winter use profile.  Edit: But if same use as last year - I estimated a c£5 credit come next Apr after getting the first revised DD.

If you really dont like it, and can tolerate seasonal variations in bills, EOn will do monthly variable direct debit on many (some here say not all plans) - but iirc you have to phone to request it - or smart prepay.

No more credit/ debit cycles on annual plan - just for many if includes heating - much higher bills in winter months.

jbuchanangb

I make notes as I go along with E.ON and their calculations. I am on their "Next Loyalty 12M Fixed Rate - July 23 Issue 1" tariff. 

31 July

Email from E.ON. Direct Debit is too low. They will increase it to £192.02 effective from September.

Credit balance is currently £134.61. Expected gas charges on 7 August are £4.95. DD on 10 August will be £177. Expected credit balance will be £306.66.

Let’s recalculate based on most recent 365 days 7/8/22 to 7/8/23 for gas: 11618kWh will cost £1025.33. Electricity 27/7/22 to 27/7/23 365 days, 3458kWh will cost £1173.46. Combined total £2198.79. Subtract £306.66 gives £1892.13. Over 12 months will be £157.67.

Wait until the gas bill and the DD have entered the account and then revise again. 

21 August. Reset DD amount to £177. Lowest amount allowed would have been £172.

So according to my calculations, at £177pm, I am about £20pm over. But I will let that roll along in case we have a bad winter.

Anomnomnomaly

TCDSTM18 said:

Hello,

I have had my direct debit (DD) changed to £126.07/month by E-on without my consent even though I am £24.80 in credit on my account. Please see the attachment below. E-on also sent a letter to me saying my DD needed to increase but made no mention they'd actually changed it.

Has this happened to anyone else and does E-on have any right to increase my DD without my consent when I am already £24.80 in credit?

Kind regards,

Theo

E-on are the worst supplier I've ever dealt with.

Due to people with disabilities and the elderly living with me, we had several cost of living payments last year and we were still on a fixed rate tariff that doesn't expire until the end of Sept.

So we put all of those cost of living payments and winter fuel payments, along with that £400 total of monthly fuel payments onto the bill.

We had a credit of £1500 as of Dec last year.

We then had a solar and battery system installed earlier this year. This has further reduced our bills.

Over the longer days from April to now, our biggest bill for a month has been £40 as we don't use central heating for roughly 6 months of the year and switched from gas cooking to electric in May when the new kitchen was installed.

In spite of that credit and the fact we were paying £75 a month, and the credit on the account as of the beginning of Sept is £1409... eon decided to raise our monthly direct debit by about 15% and then refused to let us lower it by more than 10%.. and continue to do so.

They're useless... and that's not even taking into account their incompetence screwing up our house/tariff move last Sept and the fact they're still screwing over the buyers of our last house by refusing to transfer over the solar panels/fit payments (we don't get them either) to the new buyers... who have had to get solicitors and ofgem involved.

Fixed deal ends 29th Sept... after that eon can go f*** themselves.  They're incapable of getting anything right until you go down the complaint to ofgem route.