In debt to EON

WiiWillRockYou

Hi all

This month my EON bill went up from £165 to £402

I contacted EON and they said I was around £3000 in debit to them so they'd increased the payment in order to help me pay it off.

I believe this is because I have been a bit useless at submitting gas readings, so they have been estimated (poorly), and recently they took a reading which showed way more usage than the estimate.

Also worth noting I was struggling to submit readings because the account was under an old work email address which i had no access to, but this is fixed now.

What are my options here? I can't afford to pay £400 per month and I can't afford to pay £3000 outright. I was wanting to change supplier to Octopus but now presumably can't until this mess is sorted.

MeteredOut

It sounds like you accept the £3K debit is correct. Do you know how far that goes back? ie. is it to cover usage in the past year, or prior to that?

Have a look at the Energy Ombudsman back-billing rules: 

• You can’t be charged for gas or electricity used more than 12 months ago if you have not been correctly billed for it, or informed about it via a statement of account, before. This includes situations where a supplier increases your Direct Debit because it was set too low. Suppliers cannot use this to recover any shortfall for a period longer than 12 months ago."

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/information-consumers/energy-advice-households/check-energy-back-billing-rules

The fact that you did not keep your email address up to date does not mean gas usage is not payable.

But, energy suppliers have a duty to work with customers who will struggle to pay, so if all the debt is from the past 12 months, they should work with you to agree a DD amount you can afford to settle the balance.

You will not be able to move to Octopus until you settle your EON bill.

tifo

If you'd know before you might have been able to join this scheme https://www.eonnext.com/blog/winter-affordability-support-scheme but it's closed now.