E.ON - Backdated Charges?!?

neb187

Hi, i received a letter from E.ON today which has infuriated me enough to come and seek guidance here before i tackle them!

Basically the letter states that i owe them £474.83 from a previous address due to incorrect readings during my time at that address, However and i quote 'in recognition of the errors that have led to this situation we have reduced the outstanding balance to £64.43'. Quite a reduction but, my thoughts are:

• Surely if i genuinely owed them £400+ in the first instance, they wouldn't be offering me a discount
• I left the property in question 11 months ago, with the 'final bill' settled at the time. Can they stil bill me after receiving and paying a final bill?
• they had never questioned the readings during my time at the property and were happy to take my DD payments every month, so shouldn't this alleged discrepancy have been noticed sooner

I'd appreciate what you're thoughts are and the best way to tackle E.ON on this. I can't see why i should be expected to pay this £64.43 just because they say i owe it!

Many thanks!!

neil9313

this comes down to meter readings, did you read it on the day you moved out?

neb187

Yes, i provided them with the final reading, they sent me the final bill and i paid it - back in July last year. As far as i was concerned (and they) the account was then closed, or at least this was message i got when i logged onto the account online


Thanks

Premier_2

So why do they now believe you owe them £474.83? What does this consist of? What are "the errors that have led to this situation"?

neb187

Well the letter states...
'We have underbilled you for the electricity you had used there. This is because we billed you to readings which had been incorrectly provided to us witha zero at the begining'

When submitting a reading, all i did is the same as i do now - enter the number that's dislayed on the meter!

Premier_2

So they originally billed you based customer readings only?

They would do this in good faith assuming the meter readings provided were correct.

If it now transpires that the meter readings provided by yourself were infact incorrect, they are certainly within their rights to re-bill you based on the correct reading they have now obtained.

irrelevant

Firstly, ask them to send you a document entitled "Complaints to the company, code of practice". They have to send you this on request. This lists what their obligations are. I've got the powergen(part of eon) version from a couple of years ago, but only on paper. It will contain useful infomation such as how much compensation they will pay you should they make a mistake (per incident) etc.

We successfully argued a £400+ bill down to £89 by quoting their own figures back at them a while back... It went all the way to the directors office, though, before anybody actually started paying attention and stopped just reading back what the computer told them we owed.

Most of our problems stemmed from the account being passed back and forwards between multiple computer systems due to the merging of our original supply with powergen and eon and their attempts to integrate the various billing systems. Were you always an eon customer?

If they've already reduced the amount they owe that substantially, though, maybe they've learned their lesson. You should, however, go back through your records and check the meter readings if you have any. Don't be afraid to ask for copies of all the bills for your time at the previous address. Check everything and see how it adds up. Also ask for an explanation of the reduction offered - you might be entitleled to the compensation for their mistakes on top of this!

HTH
Rob