[vulnerablecustomer]

I have some mental health problems at the moment and as a result my financial situation is not fantastic.

First of all, my initial payment was on the 20th Sept for £84. I use about £50 energy per month. I then was advised that a further £84 would be taken on the 1st Oct, less than two weeks later? I could not afford to pay three months of energy up front! (which is what this is). I was advised that this could not be changed, via email. There would be a health check after a month, after I had forked out 3x what I should have.

Because I could not afford this I had to cancel the direct debit as it would have bounced anyway. I then got threatened that this would invalidate my tariff. This caused me even more stress and worry with the rising energy costs and all of the fixed offers disappearing from the comparison websites.

Excerpts of the email that are lies. This is how I was treated:

Hello

Thank you for getting in touch.

Please note we can not decrease your direct debit. After your first month with us and then again every six months we run an account health check which looks at your fuel usage and monthly payments, to see if you are paying too much or too little for your energy. This considers any credit or debit balance on your account. Although we will automatically review this every 6 months, we can do it manually at any point at your request.

[QUOTE] Based on the foretasted usage at the time you was quoted for the 2 year tariff the £84.63 is the correct amount you need to pay by Direct Debit each month which you agreed to. We would not be able to lower the amount and knowingly out you into debt.[/QUOTE

I have looked at the previous emails that you have been sent from us and honestly speaking, we can only amend your monthly direct debit after 6 months that's when we do a review under the account.

We do apologies for the inconvenience but as per OFGEM that's what the regulation says plus if you cancel your direct debit there will be a charge under the account.

What I will suggest is that you should leave the monthly direct debit as it is, when you build up that credit you can still have it refunded back to you

I asked four times for details on escalating to the regulator; I got no information on this.
I got advised to contact the Extra Support team; I was given the old EON number, different company, so not able to get further help there.

It's all good and well having a health check and being refunded the money. The most critical part of this convoluted (interest stealing, cashflow padding) situation is that the person has the money in their account to loan in this way. I did and do not. This literally takes food off my table.

If there was not an energy crisis then I would have changed to a supplier that doesn't exacerbate vulnerable people's mental health issues!

Does anyone know the way to get additional support for vulnerable people from EON Next?

[Beki]

@vulnerablecustomer Hi, thank you for taking the time to post on our Customer Community. This is concerning and I would like to begin by taking the opportunity to apologise for the issues you have raised and I want to reassure you that this is by no means indicative of the standard of customer care that we endeavour to demonstrate.

I’d like to investigate this further with you and reach a resolution, would you be able to send a message across to us on Facebook (@eonnext) or Twitter (@eon_next) or send me a private message with your account number.

Sending positive energy to you,
Beki - Digi Ops Team Leader & Sustainability Enthusiast

Everything & everyone powered by sustainable energy. 🌍

[Undecided]

Post on Trust Pilot with your experience.