e-on rip off

stevie_c_6

hi guys. i recently changed to onine billing for e-on from n-power. with n-power i was paying about £75 per month on duel fuel and did an online search and e-on came back £200 per year cheaper (obviously i switched). unfortunatley i moved house 3 months late and e-on refused to put biling meters in as the house had prepayment meters so i asked for a closing bill. the bill i got was for £600 for 3 months. given that i was paying the equivelent of £225 with n-power for the same billing period i htought there had been some mistake (as they had done an estimated reading for gas(£90 elec and £510 gas) and both myself and my wife work full time). so emailed e-on. i got a reply stating that everything was correct and the money would be coming out of my bank on the 21st of the month. i have again e-mailed them to adv that they should recheck and am willing to go to court to dispute the bill as i feel they are charging me an unfair rate to what weas compared. any suggestion???

Stardelta

Are E.CON you could contact Energywatch I did, but as much use as a chocolate fireguard. Worth a try.

mute_posting

Can you clarify OP...

Old house was NPower and then E.on on credit meters

New house (moved to 3 months after switch to E.on) is pre-pay meters?

The bill is for the old house?

There is a possibility that you fell victim to the £DD con whereby the supplier says they'll set your DD £ ammount to £60 (you think great - cheaper than the £75 I currently pay) but they fail to make clear that that has nothing to do with the unit rates or usage so you end up running up debts immediately.

I assume you took readings when you moved out (and when you switched to E.on from NPower)? Are these readings something like those used for the bill?

stevie_c_6

thans for posts. was with n-power on bill (old address) then switched to e-on billing (old address) the quoted £200 cheaper for the whole year. which was around £550 for the year the billed me for £520 gas for 3 months. didnt take meter readings as they told me they would do it automatically on my moving date but didnt and had to do an estimate. i pointed out that this may be where the proble lies (the estimated reading) but e-on cliam that they have checked and everything is correct. at the least i feel i would have a case for mis-representation (if i spelt it right)

ALIBOBSY

I have never trusted any company to take meter readings for me when we have moved. Always do your own anyway. Do you have your bills from n-power for the same period in the previous year? If the usage level is much lower than their estimate you could use this to argue them down. If no join phone energy watch.
good luck
ali x

toadfish

I have been having trouble with eon/powergen for the last 5 months.
I was living in a rented 1 bed flat with storage heaters for a year. It was the first time that I had lived on my own and been responsible for utility bills so I had no idea how much electricity would cost. I didn't want to get in to debt so I started paying £40 a month online so when I did recieve my electric bill I would not owe a lot. I had paid £120 before I had recieved my first bill. When I recieved my first bill I still owed £164.49 which I paid. I decided to set up a direct debit in march 2007. The minimum monthly payment was £77.50. I paid this for 3 months at which point the eon website advised me that I could lower my payments to £31.50 each month as my account was always in credit. I paid at this rate until January 2008 and my account was still in credit.
I moved house In January and sent eon my meter reading for my final bill just incase I owed them anything. I recieved my final bill via email about 3 days later. I almost passed out when I looked at it, the final bill was for £1068.38.
I had submitted a meter reading in june 2007 so this huge bill was from a period of around 6 months. I immediatley rang eon to find out how my final electric bill for my 1 bed flat could be so high as I had never missed a payment and I was paying the ammount that their website recommended and they said they would look into it. I heard nothing for a while so I contacted them again to see if they had found anything out to be told they were still looking into it. I eventually recieved a phone call about 2 weeks later they had still not discovered why the bill is so high. The lady assured me that a bill this size for a 1 bed flat must be incorrect which gave me some relief. The lady said she needed to speak to someone else in her department and she would be back in contact with me. I heard nothing for a couple of weeks then a call to tell me they were still looking into it. Another couple of weeks later I recieved a call from eon's debt recovery agency demanding the money. I explained that this was being looked into by eon and I was waiting for a reply from them. I rang eon immediatley and they said they would put my account on hold and assured me that I would not recieve another call from the debt collectors. A week later I recieved a threatening letter from the debt collectors so I rang eon again and they told me to ignore it as they were still looking into it. I recieved a few more calls from eon telling me they still hadn't got to the bottom of this yet.
I know the person that moved into the flat after I moved out and I had made him aware of my problem so he has been closely monitoring the electric meter. In the first 5 days of my friend moving into the flat the meter reading had gone up by around 1000 units which works out at around £90. I contacted eon again and they said they would send an engineer out to investigate which they never did.
Eon rang me after another couple of weeks and told me that the reason my bill was so high is because the storage heaters in the flat are not on economy 7 and are heating up at standard rate. They also told me that this is not their problem it is between me and the landlord of the flat and that the landlord didnt inform them that he was putting storage heaters in. There are 4 storage heaters in the flat of which only 2 work and they look as though they have been there for many years.
I called the landlord and informed him of my situation and that eon were saying that the problem is because the heaters are not on economy 7 and he told me that this is nonsense if there was a problem he would have known by now. I thought the same thing myself, the heaters have been there for years surely if someone who lived there before me recieved bills like this they would have something to say about it.
I have made countless phone calls to eon regarding this matter and they keep telling me the same thing over and over. To this point no engineer has been round to the flat to investigate so how they can tell me that the problem is due to the wrong meter being fitted without even looking is beyond me. For all I know the meter could not be working properly or I could have read the wrong meter as there are 3 meters in the electric cupboard. 1 meter has dials on (the one I took my readings from) and 2 digital meters one with high and one with low written on them (economy 7 meters) which eon think belong to the flat upstairs but are not entirely sure. The flat upstairs has central heating so it is a totally different set up to mine.
Eon told me that an engineer had been round last week and investigated but when I spoke to my friend who lives there he told me that this was untrue and there had been no such visit.
I contacted energy watch to make a complaint only to be passed over to eons complaint department and told the same thing "The flat has the wrong type of electric meter it is a single rate not economy 7". After getting off the phone to eon complaints department I recieved another call from the debt collectors. I informed them that I had reported my problem to energy watch and they asked me for my energy watch reference number which I gave them and they left it at that.
The next day the debt collectors rang me again demanding the money. I told them that I had given them my energy watch reference the day before to which they replied eon have updated my account and instructed them to chase me for the money. I rang eon again and told them that the debt collectors are hassling me and I demanded that this problem be resolved immediatly only to be told the same again, "wrong meter".
They have still not sent an engineer to the flat and they have still not lifted a finger to help me, all they have done is fobbed me off and gave my details to debt collectors.
If I felt that this bill was correct and I believed that it was possible to use over 11000kwh in a 1 bed flat in 6 months then I would sort a way to repay without hesitation, however I do not believe this bill to be anywhere near correct so I dont feel it fair that I be put through this stress and worry through something that is no fault of my own.
Eon have told me that they have put a hold on my account for a month so the debt collectors wont bother me until then.
THEN WHAT????????????????

Cardew

Refuse to speak on the telephone to the debt collectors.

Write to E-on and send by recorded delivery, copy to Energywatch, and explain as above. Add that you seek assurance they will withdraw the case from their bloodhounds.

Phoning E-on is a complete waste of time as you simply get a different call centre operator each time and they are not interested in a problem.

msmicawber

Ah, I'm not alone then. I feel that E-on have done a number on me too. They allegedly calculated my monthly DD based on my annual usage (given in KWh) and assured me they'd be cheaper than my supplier at the time. I paid in good faith what they asked me to pay then received the first quarter's bill and found that I was hugely in debit. I phoned them and we increased the DD to nearly 3 times the original amount and yet the amount of the debit doesn't appear to have reduced much. I have a dual-fuel account, pay by monthly DD and have gone paperless billing, but they're still twice as expensive as Scottish Power (my previous fuel company), so I'm switching back.

msmicawber

Oh, I meant to say as well that if you enter your details into the comparison sites, they indicate that Eon are a lot cheaper than they actually are. I've queried the figures that they're using, since when I enter KWh, they suggest that with Eon I should be paying around £400 a year, whereas when I enter the amount that I've paid to Eon, they assume a much higher usage than my meters have recorded.

sleep2much

I switched to Southern from n-power, a lot cheaper, or so I was lead to believe, but after my first meter reading (which was gas and electric used over the winter) they decided to double my DD to £90pm, so I'm switching again, I don't mind paying monthly but I wish their guestimates would take into account an average use, and not one that gives me "credit" after a few months, bit daft having a meter in the first place, I'm thinking of paying on a real bill every quarter, but then they charge you more per unit, funny system these days.

carlbcfc

£830 my e-on bill for 6 months in a 2 bed new build. First was dec to jan "estimate" £196......2nd from feb 8th till last week £634.......same as u mate about "not on economy 7"..... what do we do? who do we go to? ....i cant even find my meter