[Markc]

Hi, I've had a prepayment gas meter since I moved in. Never had any debt on it since it was installed for previous owners. Been using it without any issues for a few years just haven't bothered to ask for it to be changed over since I'm selling the house now anyway.

Just got issued that new eon next card and tried to use it for the first time a few days ago and it ate £20 and left just a few pence on the meter. I wasn't paying attention so I assumed I'd somehow activated emergency credit while I'd been on holiday and it was taking off what I owed. So I put another £40 on and it ate that too which was alarming. I just checked the 27 GD remaining and it's nearly £1500! I've never had any outstanding debt on there. I have a statement from just last month showing my balance was £70 in credit.

I've no idea what's happened or where this supposed debt has come from and I can't top up my gas as it just eats up my money. Would phone customer services but they're shut at the mo and it's stressing me out. Cheers for any help.

Edited to add additional info - spoken with eon next on the phone. It appears that the debt may have been on the machine since before I moved in and rather than being removed the repayment rate was just set to zero or I guess so low I didn't notice. The new card changed up the rate to 99%. The issue can't be resolved until Eon confirms the error. At least the repayment rate has been put back to zero so I can top up for now.

I hope this is the first time my money has been taken to pay off this debt as it's not mine and I'm not even sure how I'd know at this point.

[theunknowntech]

What should happen at this point, is that the amount of "debt" that you overpaid (it's the easiest way to explain this!) will need to be calculated, especially to identify exactly how much credit the meter swallowed and threw into a black hole. Once this is known, E.On should either be able to issue a cash refund (probably by cheque), or issue free credits onto your gas card to replace what was lost. If it's not your debt, you are entitled to a full refund of whatever was paid towards it.

Please continue to top-up at the same shop in the meantime, as it'll need several messages sent between the meter and E.On to get the data through - the card acts like a postie effectively. The same card can also be used to reconfigure the meter to fully disable debt collection once this is resolved. It may take up to four top-ups at the same shop for the meter to pick up the config change, disable debt collection mode and wipe out the debt completely.

[Landmark]

@Markc Please to hear you subsequently got it sorted. Sorry about your loss of £60 which caught you out.