[takeshi]

Last year the smart meter had an issue talking to the meters. engineer came out, adjusted the meter etc and then two days later a huge debt was on bth electric and gas bills. Called customer service and explained the issue, debt was in error and removed from account and repaid what the meter was taking from us on a daily debt recovery. received an email shortly afterwards explaing that our meters were being updated to reflect this.....hey presto, debt back on and daily debt recovery back in action!. called 3 times today and call was cut off 3 times whilst on hold! not phoning for a fourth time only to be cut off again, i could understand if i was irate with the person on the other end of the line but, i remained calm on each call which would be reflected in the recordings of the calls. what are my options now? Ofgem for disgraceful customer service? ombudsman for fraudulently taking money from me for a non existent debt?

[theunknowntech]

That doesn't sound right at all. If you don't owe any debt, then indeed the debt recovery mode is meant to be disabled so that it doesn't get in the way. Even if you did owe a debt, as soon as the remaining debt balance reaches £0.00 the meter is supposed to ping an alert back to the supplier - I think it's something like 0x81A9 Debt Collection Completed - Payment Debt, 0x81A7 Debt Collection Completed - Time Debt 1 or 0x81A8 Debt Collection Completed - Time Debt 2 which triggers Alert WAN back to the supplier along with creating an entry in the event log. After that's done, the meter should turn off debt collection mode within a couple of minutes and go back to normal. Likewise, if it's overridden manually by the supplier, the same thing happens - except that the logs would show that debt recovery was manually disabled by the supplier.

If you have overpaid, then you are entitled to a refund of the credit that was swallowed by the meter - which includes cases where debt recovery got turned on when it shouldn't have been enabled at all. If you don't get anywhere with the complaints process, your next stop would be the Energy Ombudsman. You'll need to either reach deadlock with E.On or go eight weeks with the complaint unresolved before you can go down that route, whichever comes first. You can't complain to Ofgem I'm afraid, as the role of complaint handling has been delegated to Ombudsman Services. Ofgem won't be able to assist.

[Beki]

@takeshi Hey there, Beki here! 👋

This definitely sounds like one we need to investigate. If you are able to, would you pop us a message on Facebook/Twitter and one of our Energy Specialists will be able to look into this for you? I would offer to do it myself however I am away for a family bereavement and would hate for you to be left with no help.

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

Everything & everyone powered by sustainable energy. 🌍