Gross mismanagement from Eon

Doidle99

This is as much a cautionary tale as a damnation of Eon.

I am sorry that this submission is so long but I did not want to miss any relevant information.

We are/were paying EON by Direct Debit.

In January 2024, at the prompting of Martin Lewis' MoneySavng website, I checked my invoice and was surprised to see that my credit balance was over £1600 and my direct debit exceeded even the cost for worst month of the winter so far. This prompted me to create a spreadsheet to present a clearer picture based upon the invoice figures supplied by EON.  Accordingly, I reduced my Direct Debit immediately on my account but the reduction was limited by EON. I pointed out to Customer Services that even my reduced figure was £140 more than it needed to be to cover my annual cost. They were, in fact, taking much more than was necessary. I demanded the return of my credit balance and a further reduction of my direct debit.

Forty-two emails later, my balance was refunded and after much prompting they reduced my Direct Debit further to £550 

In April 2024, I received an email demanding that I increase my Direct Debit again by £139.  My spreadsheet proved that this was entirely unnecessary. A further exchange of emails prompted them to cancel the suggested increase.

At no time had there been any explanation why they were trying to increase my Direct debit but I noted that my invoices did show an estimate for the next twelve months but only the estimated cost, not the estimated usage.  I assumed that the high cost estimate was based on anticipated price rises.

Had I analyzed further I would have questioned those estimates. They were obviously wrong. They estimated over £8000 per year while I had proved that £6600 was more than enough.

And so we come to July 2024.

On July 11th I received by email an invitation to pick a new tariff as mine was expiring in August. The email also gave an estimate of my annual cost £6300 at which I smiled as it was finally (I thought) in line with my figures.

Seven days later, I received my monthly invoice and noticed that the estimated cost for the coming year had jumped to over £8000. I looked back at the previous email and immediately saw the cause of the problem because that email showed EON's estimate of my actual usage for the coming year. It was wildly wrong, showing an estimated gas consumption of almost double my actual usage. I immediately notified EON of the discrepancy. 

Later that day, I received yet another demand from them to increase my Direct Debit to more than £720!  In investigating a new tariff, EON produced an estimate, based on the exact twelve month usage figures recovered from my smart meter, of just £350 per month yet here they were demanding that my direct debit be increased from £550 to more than double their own estimate. Even my present £550 would be excessive. 

In a frustrating further exchange of emails with Customer Services (a misnomer in my opinion) they finally admitted awareness of the erroneous estimate of my gas usage but said they could not correct it!!  They advised that it would reduce over time as would my direct debit. I pointed out that my smart meter was installed eighteen months ago when the reading was zero and now shows that I have used just 62000 kwH so far while they are estimating an annual usage of 83000.  In response they finally had the good grace to offer to calculate my payments manually but would not correct the error.  That was the last straw for me and a few minutes later I signed up with Octopus energy at an estimated monthly charge of £352. 

The following paragraph I was going to include on my submission to the ombudsman:

(This, finally, brings me to your door. They apparently appeared to conjure my erroneous gas usage figure out of thin air and as a result substantially overcharged me.  They did repay the balance eventually after some pressure but they have continued to try to overcharge again and have effectively put me on notice that they will continue to do so as they will not correct or amend either their system or my erroneous figure within the system.  I have to wonder how many other of their customers, perhaps with less awareness than me,  are being scammed  into overpaying like this.

I hope you agree that this might bear further investigation.  I should mention that I have retained all the correspondence and invoices relating to this matter should you have any questions.)

Update. 24 August 2024

I signed up with Octopus Energy on 28 July and they immediately realized that there was a problem with the  gas account they inherited from EON.  EON, when they installed my smart meter on January 18th 2023 failed to correctly register my new gas meter and failed also to remove the registration of my old gas meter.   They were, unknown to me,  continuing to apply estimated readings to my old gas meter account while billing me on my smart meter account.  When I moved to Octopus, EON apparently applied the estimated reading from my old gas meter as an account closing reading on my current smart meter account.  This was sheer incompetence and negligence.

Consequently, to date, they have not yet closed my account. but I am fully signed up with Octopus. 

On August 23rd, I received a further email advising me that they were going to take a further £550 direct debit on September 3rd. I immediately contacted my bank and cancelled the direct debit.   My account balance, which should to be returned without delay, was previously shown as £432.31 credit but yesterday's email showed a debit balance of £9315.40 - more than double my normal annual cost for all energy.  This should have triggered some kind of alarm on the system. It certainly alarmed me!  None of the additional charges carried any explanation.  It was only after an exhaustive search of my online account that I saw the continuing estimated readings on my old meter and realised the probable cause of the last eight months of grief. 

I reported this to customer services by email and received no reply.  Very early on the morning of August 24th I sent a WhatsApp message and finally, after nearly eight months began to receive a semblance of understanding but am still waiting for this to be resolved.   I have filed a complaint but they seem in hurry to correct this to facilitate the return of my still outstanding credit.   

All in all, EON's handling and mismanagement of my account and their previous refusal to make any corrections is atrocious.  

My advice to all Eon customers (maybe other suppliers customers too) is to check your online account meter readings history to see if they are still listing a meter which you no longer have installed and to which they are applying estimated readings.  

I will update this as the situation dictates.

Mark_d

If you're unhappy with EON then go elsewhere.  When you switch, there are rules stating that your old supplier has to automatically refund your credit balance.

Reed_Richards

I was with Eon in 2020.  All their bills said:

Meter readings

Key C = customer A = actual E = estimate

and they would then use the appropriate letter to indicate what type of reading it was.  That made it abundantly clear if your readings were estimated.

Doidle99 said:

This is as much a cautionary tale as a damnation of Eon.

Well yes, and one moral of the tale is to look carefully at your bills.  It should be easy to see if your bills are based on estimated readings.
  

Doidle99

Thank you Mark_d. You can see from my post that I have already moved to Octopus and that rather than refund my £432 credit applied a mistaken debit of £9700.

Exodi

Customer of EON (Next) and I've had absolutely no problems, if anything they've gone above and beyond for me (waiving exit charges switching tariffs, retrospectively backdating new rates, etc).

I'd expect that such a problem which involves estimated billing across different meters is likely to go wrong, especially where the billpayer doesn't specifically identify the issue and just keeps reiterating that it's 'too high'.

Outside of this, your usage is pretty incredible. For me, as two adults in a 3 bed detatched house with gas central heating and cooker, our gas usage is ~8.4kWh per year.

You mention your actual usage is ~62kWh over 18 months (I can't be sure what period this spans, as it may span two winters, or it could be from recently and span two summers - as a compromise I'll take the average and assume ~41.3kWh per year). That's frankly incredible, approximately 5x my households usage.

Either you live in a 15 bedroom mansion with a heated pool and sauna, your thermostat is stuck on 30 degrees, or your usage has been calculated incorrectly.

FreeBear

Doidle99 said: I signed up with Octopus Energy on 28 July and they immediately realized that there was a problem with the  gas account they inherited from EON.  EON, when they installed my smart meter on January 18th 2023 failed to correctly register my new gas meter and failed also to remove the registration of my old gas meter.

Check your gas bill to see what units they are charging you for. With a smart meter, it will be cubic metres (m³). It is not unheard of for a smart meter to be installed, and a supplier continues to charge in (100s) cubic feet, and you end up paying nearly three times as much - I had this issue with a previous supplier and it only got resolved after moving to another company.

62000kWh is a huge amount of gas for a domestic household to get through, so I'm wondering if Eon have mixed up the units. If they have, you will be in line for a sizeable refund.

Reed_Richards

FreeBear said:

Check your gas bill to see what units they are charging you for. With a smart meter, it will be cubic metres (m³). It is not unheard of for a smart meter to be installed, and a supplier continues to charge in (100s) cubic feet, and you end up paying nearly three times as much - I had this issue with a previous supplier and it only got resolved after moving to another company.

That happened to me too, although I was able to resolve it easily enough.

Sailbad

Exodi said:

Customer of EON (Next) and I've had absolutely no problems, if anything they've gone above and beyond for me (waiving exit charges switching tariffs, retrospectively backdating new rates, etc).

I'd expect that such a problem which involves estimated billing across different meters is likely to go wrong, especially where the billpayer doesn't specifically identify the issue and just keeps reiterating that it's 'too high'.

Outside of this, your usage is pretty incredible. For me, as two adults in a 3 bed detatched house with gas central heating and cooker, our gas usage is ~8.4kWh per year.

You mention your actual usage is ~62kWh over 18 months (I can't be sure what period this spans, as it may span two winters, or it could be from recently and span two summers - as a compromise I'll take the average and assume ~41.3kWh per year). That's frankly incredible, approximately 5x my households usage.

Either you live in a 15 bedroom mansion with a heated pool and sauna, your thermostat is stuck on 30 degrees, or your usage has been calculated incorrectly.

Do you mean kWh or MWh?

Exodi

Sailbad said:

Exodi said:

Customer of EON (Next) and I've had absolutely no problems, if anything they've gone above and beyond for me (waiving exit charges switching tariffs, retrospectively backdating new rates, etc).

I'd expect that such a problem which involves estimated billing across different meters is likely to go wrong, especially where the billpayer doesn't specifically identify the issue and just keeps reiterating that it's 'too high'.

Outside of this, your usage is pretty incredible. For me, as two adults in a 3 bed detatched house with gas central heating and cooker, our gas usage is ~8.4kWh per year.

You mention your actual usage is ~62kWh over 18 months (I can't be sure what period this spans, as it may span two winters, or it could be from recently and span two summers - as a compromise I'll take the average and assume ~41.3kWh per year). That's frankly incredible, approximately 5x my households usage.

Either you live in a 15 bedroom mansion with a heated pool and sauna, your thermostat is stuck on 30 degrees, or your usage has been calculated incorrectly.

Do you mean kWh or MWh?

k/kWh or MWh but thanks for clearing that up as I'm sure it wasn't obvious.

Doidle99

Four bed bungalow. Nothing special.  Earlier last year they estimated my annual cost at over £13000 - three times the actual annual cost.  They have simply kept my former meter alive and estimated new readings every month.  They are now trying to collect payment for the non-existent gas on that non-existent meter.  They don't seem to be able to get their heads around that.   

born_again

Doidle99 said:

Four bed bungalow. Nothing special.  Earlier last year they estimated my annual cost at over £13000 - three times the actual annual cost.  They have simply kept my former meter alive and estimated new readings every month.  They are now trying to collect payment for the non-existent gas on that non-existent meter.  They don't seem to be able to get their heads around that.   

Was it not flagged in at the time that they were making estimated readings on the wrong meter. Which would have been obvious if your were suppling readings.
As well as wrong meter number on the bill.