Like many I was confused and suffered massive anxiety by the disparity between the figure mentioned in my renewal email ... and the far higher figures shown when I clicked through to select the new tariff - I fired off an email, a twitter DM, sent WhatsApp message, tried to get through on the phone - all to no avail so far. Been more than a week and I see on other threads that people seem to be waiting at least 2 weeks for a response ....
Whilst I now understand (via someone on the Martin Lewis MSE forum) that the much higher rates shown on the new SV tariff details reflect what the prices would have been before the EPG announcement - I have no idea when they will be adjusted will be sorted and whilst eon-next have flagged up some kind of note about this, they didn't really make it clear what they meant
Plus ... I was also completely taken unawares when I spotted that I will no longer be on the rates for direct customers even when the EPG/EBSS figures are eventually factored in. This sparked even more anxiety - especially as I have not been able to get any response from customer services ...
Eventually I came across somewhere on the eon-next site (can't remember where to find it again) a paragraph stating that if the EBSS payment brings the direct debit down to below £1 the customer will be put on a direct debit payment holiday ... and so is temporarily no longer treated as someone who pays by DD and attracts the lower standing charge and unit rates that direct debit customers enjoy ...
Wouldn't it have been sensible to add this paragraph to the tariff info details display? So that affected customers could immediately see why their new tariff was being shown as "pay on receipt of bill" and not be left wondering why this had happened without warning? Not just have it buried somewhere that you might or might not come across by chance/much googling?
Also I'd like to know why is it that customers who are taken off direct debit payment and put onto a "pay on receipt of bill" rate not by choice, are being charged the higher rates that pay on receipt of bill payers are charged?
Perhaps the EBSS will still cover the bill for the next few months in these cases - and perhaps it won't - I don't know because I don't know exactly what the new charge will be if it's not at the EPG rate for direct debit customers ...
Surely in these cases, the rates should be adjusted down to the direct debit customer level - even if in theory the amount to pay might still be less than £1 for now?
But even if that is refused, much clear and "one-stop shop" style communication from eon-next would have been so much more helpful - and helped eon-next too probably by preventing such a massive avalanche of panicked customers contacting customer services!
I still haven't selected the new tariff because I still don't know what to do and I resent being put onto the non-direct debit customer rate without being consulted or able to discuss this with a real human being person ... so what to do? My current tariff expires next Sunday (Nov 6th) ... I repeat, what to do???