EON Refund Request Not Worth It?

chocoholic123

I'll start by saying I do get a bit confused when it comes to my gas and electric, so I may be missing something here.

I logged into my E.ON account and saw that I'm £400 in credit for gas/electric. From what I understand, that seems quite high for this time of year, so I clicked to request a refund and chose £200. The site then showed this message:

Your current Direct Debit: £217.67 per month
I understand that by requesting a refund of £200.00, my Direct Debit will change to £275.11 per month.

That felt like a steep increase, especially since I would still be £200 in credit after the refund.

Out of curiosity, I changed the refund amount to just £1, and it then said:

Your current Direct Debit: £217.67 per month
I understand that by requesting a refund of £1.00, my Direct Debit will change to £258.52 per month.

Am I missing something? How does a £1 refund trigger a £40 monthly increase in my Direct Debit? How on earth are they calculating this?

Mark_d

Your direct debit is currently too low to cover the energy costs for the coming winter.  Any recalculation of your direct debit will trigger a significant increase.  Even if you only request the refund of one penny.

chocoholic123

They decreased my direct debit last month by £5 (not a lot) but they weren't worried then. I do find this really confusing. I think I'll just leave the money where it is and check again in a couple of months. 

Scot_39

There's a big fixed offset in their somewhere.

The relative change (275-258)× 12  is matching the £199 difference in the refund.

Do you know what your actual annual forecast cost is.

Check your latest bill statement or Mar price change summary forecast if on svt and divide it by 12 as a rough guide.

Could it be that the current £217 already  includes money off to clear an even larger existing credit (it would have to be big - to cover a £40 differnce). 

Mines was lowered to clear credit last spring / summer by over 15% of my then annual estimate /12 and only just got balance near 0 £9 iirc on early Apr statement

chocoholic123

Scot_39 said:

There's a big fixed offset in their somewhere.

The relative change (275-258)× 12  is matching the £199 difference in the refund.

Do you know what your actual annual forecast cost is.

Check your latest bill statement or Mar price change summary forecast if on svt and divide it by 12 as a rough guide.

Could it be that the current £217 already  includes money off to clear an even larger existing credit (it would have to be big - to cover a £40 differnce). 

Mines was lowered to clear credit last spring / summer by over 15% of my then annual estimate /12 and only just got balance near 0 £9 iirc on early Apr statement

Oh my - thank you - I think I get it! 

From EON:

Your estimated cost for the year.

£1,836 a year for electricity

£1,507 a year for gas

Which if you sum and divide by 12 is £278 per month. 

We did have a really heavy use of both electric and gas up to about six months ago, so they are assuming winter will be bad, but hopefully this year it won't. 

Scot_39

Accounts in clear credit (up to date measurements and a recent usage calc) are normally allowed to drop the DD even if only by 10% or so online.

They might have blocked following last month's reduction, but you could try that route instead.