[Rowan]

Hi,

I have Economy 7 electricity because I have night storage heaters.
EON swap the day and night reading on my account.
I make sure that I put the correct number into the right box, it appears the wrong way around.
I then have to spend stressful hours getting it corrected.

How hard can it be to realise that Economy 7 is for people who have night storage heating and will use more electricity at night than during the day.

[meldrewreborn]

@Beki_EONNext might have some ability to influence customers services.

One long term solution might be (and I can't believe I'm actually suggesting this) to get a smart meter.

customers services are apparently easier to get through to on twitter and Instagram, but why this is the case is beyond me - eon next should support all customers equally and this policy appears to be age discrimination.

Also why Eon next is still importing customers from EON when it can't properly support the customers it already has is beyond me.

[Beki]

@Rowan - If you pop the team a message on socials, they can access your account and get this sorted out for you. It seems that some information has been processed incorrectly in the meter details that will need sorting out, which may have to go to the tech team to sort out. Usually it takes about 10 working days. 😊
@meldrewreborn Thanks so much for your tag and your reply.

I think the reason it's easier, is because we are available out of hours. It also doesn't require you to sit on the phone on hold - you can just pop us a message, carry on with your day until we can get back in touch. I think to say that we are discriminating against age is incorrect, as I know plenty of users both younger and older who use social media. 🙌

We have almost completed the migration of E.ON customers, of course with lots of data there are a few hiccups, but nothing that we can't sort out 😊

[meldrewreborn]

@Beki_EONNext

The statistics don't support your contention on whether prioritising use of twitter for customer services is age discriminatory.

[meldrewreborn]

@Beki_EONNextThe statistics don't support your contention on whether prioritising use of twitter for customer services is age discriminatory.

The public most of all want to be able to phone or email and get a relatively swift response. But so many of the posts on this forum point to how unresponsive they find customer services to be. Each channel of communication should get equality of service level.

[Beki]

@meldrewreborn We do not prioritise Twitter/Facebook over the telephone, we actually have more staff on the phones that digitally. We offer a lot of alternative means of communication so customers have multiple ways to get in touch. I think having the option to get in touch with your energy company 'out of hours' is a relief to most of our customers, regardless of age, and of course, we can always call back if the customer requests it. 😊

[meldrewreborn]

But the experience of people who post on here indicates something different.

I've not had the need to contact customer services myself, but some people posting here are in desperate circumstances (like being unable to top up their prepayment devices and thus being cut off from Gas or electricity or both) expose a yawning gap in customer services delivery to people in great need.

People on prepayment meters are often in difficult circumstances, pay the highest prices, but are at the highest risk of being cut off from power. When they are forcibly moved from another company and the systems don't switch smoothly there is understandable rage at being victims of the system.

Surely there are ways of prioritising resolution of these issues over matters that are, in the overall scheme of things, less urgent. Some posts over a week old have not been picked up by Eon next. If they have they've not closed the post.

[Thorium]

Can I politely suggest that you don't opt for a Smart meter? It may seem like the perfect solution (I hoped it would be) but it may be more trouble than it's worth.

I too have a house with Economy 7 storage heaters, and got a smart meter about 3 or 4 months ago. It sort of worked until recently (albeit that the heaters were on permanently, not automatically switching on and off as they did on the old meter, so I had to pay for individual timers on each heater to get around this).

Anyway, until Sunday night this week it had all worked ok. Monday morning, house was cold - storage heaters not working at all - no power was going to the consumer unit for the heaters. I checked the supply to the consumer unit with a non-contact voltage detector, and remember the heaters were 'on' 24/7 now so it all should have been working all the time, and there was clearly no supply coming from the smart meter.

After some extended correspondence with customer services via Facebook messenger, an Engineer turned up on Tuesday morning, immediately knew what the issue was (Faulty smart meter) and advised that the smart meter was removed and an old type manually-read meter installed. An option was to 'reset' the smart meter, but the engineer said it probably wouldn't work for long. They also stated we'd done 'quite well' in that the meter had lasted a few months. They went on to say they are changing a lot of meters as this type of issue is a common problem. They also said to try to avoid getting a smart meter for as long as possible as I have economy 7.

Anyway, I'm sure you'll make your own mind up about what to do, and this experience is offered in good faith to hopefully inform your decision. I really hoped the smart meter would make life easier (no manual readings, etc) but in reality for me it was just unreliable and likely to remain that way.