How to request a refund Eon Next - A Step-by-Step Guide

  • JoeSoap's Avatar
    Level 91
    I better start by saying that this post is going to evolve. I want something to refer-to and link-to that advises how to request a credit refund. The four steps to requesting a refund come further down this post. But first... There is some debate around the figure of £500 and whether it's quicker and easier to get a refund if it's under this amount. I have been advised by members of the forum staff and have paraphrased as follows in order to help manage expectations…

    ''... there should not be any difference in the wait time if the request is over £500 and the credit should be with you within 10 working days of the refund being requested on the account. This is regardless of the amount, as long as you pay by Direct Debit and the DD is still in place. All refunds go through the same process, so they are requested and then approved and then go through a finance audit for a double check. There are a few extra checks with large balances over £1000 if the credit balance in question needs checking over, but if it's just a genuine over-payment and we have received up-to-date reads, your payment should be with you within 10 working days under normal circumstances. If no Direct Debit is in place then payment is by cheque which should be issued within 15 working days of the refund being requested on the account. The actual timings will be dependent on individual circumstances and current workload.'’

    I chose the sum of £500 exactly, as I thought this was the maximum I could get without too much fuss with reference to submitting photos and involving accounting departments etc., but as you have read above, this should not be the case. On the subject of photos, I was advised...

    ''...we do prefer to ask for pictures of the meters with the current readings showing so that as the request goes through its checks there would be no reason to decline the refund. However, it's not essential that we have pictures unless there is a discrepancy with reads, so we wouldn't refuse a refund if you weren't able to get pics, as long as the reads you were giving follow on from previous reads.''

    Here's a success story from @Cinders as posted further down the thread here ...

    ''I requested my Eon Next refund (£500) through email on the 3rd Nov and it was in my bank account on the 10th Nov. I didn't get asked for photos.... this time. As long as there is about 2 months worth of credit left in your account (at this time of year) you shouldn't have a problem getting your refunds back.''

    Personally, I would recommend sending photos if you are able to as it means there is one less reason for a delay in the processing.

    One further thing to bear in mind... Credit balances are there for a reason. A fixed DD is set so that you pay the same amount every month based on an estimate of your annual usage. It is quite normal to have a healthy balance of a couple of month's worth of DD as we approach the winter months as your monthly bills will likely exceed your monthly DD at that time of year. If you request a refund of what is seen as too much of your credit balance, then you can expect your monthly DD amount to rise in order to compensate or you will perhaps be offered a lesser amount so as to keep your DD as it is, so please be aware of this. As long as your meter readings are up-to-date then the credit balance is yours to claim, but if you take it all then your monthly DD will almost certainly rise.

    Anyway the following is what I would advise to do as a start right now...

    1. Take photos of your meters (Not the IHD as I initially did) showing the whole meter with its serial number and the current reading. It didn't matter that I had smart meters... photos were still requested. On gas meters you may have to press Button A or something to get the reading, like I did. On my electric meter I had to wait until it scrolled through various readings and info until it got to a reading that looked sensible compared to my previous submitted reading.

    2. Draft an email to hi@eonnext.com entitled, 'Credit Refund Request From Account No. XXXXXXXX'.

    3. In the email, state your name, address and account number and give your current readings. State how much of a refund you want and that you have attached photos of your meters.

    4. Attach photos of your meters to the email and send.

    For those unsure as to how to attach photos to emails, there are various ways listed on this thread...just keep reading. If you can find a way of uploading them to your PC then it's as easy as selecting 'Attachments' and choosing the photos from your files. I managed to do it all from my iPhone as detailed later in the thread.

    This should be enough to set the wheels in motion and you should not have to do anything else but wait for the payment. I got a reply to my initial email in about 15 minutes which caught me by surprise as I was expecting to wait a couple of weeks.

    Edit... I have now requested another refund and did everything in one go from my iPhone. Clever me 🙄😂 See here for details.

    In conclusion… My refund request was accepted on Saturday 19th November so was probably received by the finance department on Monday 21st November. The £500 was in my bank on Monday 5th December so exactly 10 working days later. I’m happy with that 👍
    Last edited by Anasa_EONNext; 07-11-23 at 19:32.
    I'm an Eon Next dual fuel customer with no particular expertise but have some time on my hands that I am using to try and help out a bit.
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  • Best Answer

    JoeSoap's Avatar
    Level 91
    Best Answer
    This is my personal experience so far...

    I have smart meters for both fuels and pay by monthly direct debit. My credit balance is well over £1000 and is roughly three times my current DD. I hear that Martin Lewis thinks a credit balance of twice your DD is about right at this time of year as we enter winter. By requesting a £500 refund, it will leave me with a credit balance of almost exactly that. So, thinking that it would be quick and easy to get £500, I set about applying.

    Friday 18 Nov 22... I sent an email as per my opening post but with no photos. I have smart meters so they must know my up-to-date readings as they are set to send half-hourly readings. I got a reply in 15 minutes asking for photos of the readings on the meters. It was cold, wet and dark so I thought I'd send photos of the readings on the IHD. I had no idea how I was going to do this but somehow managed... more on this in the next post on this thread. Five minutes later I got another reply stating that they needed photos of the actual meters showing the serial numbers. I'll do it tomorrow.

    Saturday 19 Nov 22... I sent photos of the meters as requested. Five minutes later I received a reply saying my request had been accepted. Job Done.

    Thursday 24 Nov 22... I keep checking my bank account... nothing. I checked my Eon Next online account and there is a note saying, 'You have a pending payment. A repayment of £500 on Nov 19th hasn't yet been applied'.

    Saturday 3 Dec 22… Two weeks exactly since my request was accepted and the refund officially requested. 10 working days have expired but nothing has appeared in the bank yet. I’ll allow for the fact it was a Saturday and the request wasn’t received by the finance department until the Monday, so that gives them until 5 Dec to hit the target. My online account is showing a Partial Credit Refund of £500 on 1st December and the credit balance has been reduced accordingly so could be on for a result on Monday.

    Monday 5 Dec 22… The £500 refund has appeared in my bank account so by my reckoning they hit the target of 10 working days. I’m happy with that 👍
    Last edited by Han_EONNext; 04-05-23 at 11:09.
  • Anasa_EONNext's Avatar
    Community Manager
    @JoeSoap This is fantastic! I can't wait to hear about your journey and many of us are not tech savvy! (including me) 😉 It's great that you got such a speedy response! 🏎 thank you for sharing this 😊
    'The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members’

    Did you know that we're open 24/7? There are lots of ways to contact us over here!📣


  • JoeSoap's Avatar
    Level 91
    @Anasa_EONNext

    Thanks for the encouragement. Perhaps you could help shed light on whether there is an amount of money that it’s easier to get refunded. I only have anecdotal evidence of the £500 so it may not be something that Eon Next would want to share publicly.
  • JoeSoap's Avatar
    Level 91
    So, after sending my email I was asked to send photos of the meters by return of email. I'm a Luddite... how do I do that. For anyone as (un)tech-gifted as me, here is how I did it... (although if you read this whole post you will see that I have since found a better way to do it)

    1. I have an iPhone and thankfully had already set it up to access my personal email account to send and receive emails. I can't remember how but if I can do it...

    2. I searched for my meters on the internet to learn how to read them, then took photos of them with my phone when I had the current readings displayed. Make sure the serial numbers are clearly visible.

    3. In my phone's photo gallery I forwarded the photos to my email address one at a time.

    4. Still on my phone, I opened the first email, pressed on the photo and selected 'Copy'. I then went to the email from Eon Next and selected 'Reply'. I typed something like, 'Here is the electric meter' and then 'Pasted' the photo. Tapped 'Send’ (or Reply) and voila... job done.

    5. I repeated for the gas meter.

    6. Five minutes later I got an email saying my request was accepted.

    It was a bit of a clunky way of doing it but it worked. If you can manage to send photos of both your meters in the initial email then great. If not, then even if you only send one photo, wait for a reply asking for the other and then send that photo as a reply. That will keep all photos and correspondence on the same email trail. Don't send two separate emails initially otherwise they may go their separate ways.

    If anyone has a more logical or sensible way of sending photos by email (or any alternative method) please post on the thread. Thanks.

    UPDATE

    I have since found a better way of attaching photos to an email on my iPhone by simply switching between an email draft and my photos. Simply draft the email and then copy and paste the required photos onto it one at a time... just press and hold on the thumbnail image in your photo gallery and select 'copy' from the box that appears, then go to to your draft email, tap on where you want the photo to go to get the cursor there then press and hold on the cursor and select 'paste'. I then got the option of selecting a photo size and selected 'Medium' which seems to work. When I tried the method out to an email address I have access to, I did notice that only the text I typed before the photos showed on the received email, and even then it showed after the photos. Anything I typed after the photos did not show at all although I have tried since and have no such problem. You can always practice a bit to get the hang of it before doing it for real.

    Also, thanks to a prompt below from @retrotecchie I remembered a clunky way of getting photos from my phone on to my PC and then attaching them to an email from there. See the link two posts down for details. If nothing else this is giving you tech-savvy folk a good laugh 😂… but also maybe giving the less tech-savvy some ideas.
    Last edited by JoeSoap; 26-06-23 at 17:02. Reason: added a bit for clarity
  • retrotecchie's Avatar
    Level 92
    Most email systems just allow you to insert a picture, or add attachments. You can just attach the photos as, er, attachments.
    Don't shoot me, I'm only the piano player. I DON'T work for or on behalf of EON.Next, but am willing to try and help if I can. Not on mains gas, mobile network or mains drainage. House heated almost entirely by baby dragons.
  • JoeSoap's Avatar
    Level 91
    Most email systems just allow you to insert a picture, or add attachments. You can just attach the photos as, er, attachments.
    Yes, I can do that on my PC using scans, docs or photos that I managed to upload from a digital camera way back when. I don't know how to get the photos from my phone onto the PC so wanted to do everything from my phone to reduce the amount of devices I had to use.

    Edit... Oh hang on... I did it to post a photo on here and made myself an idiot's guide here
    Last edited by JoeSoap; 24-11-22 at 20:42.
  • retrotecchie's Avatar
    Level 92
    @JoeSoap

    I'm sure on a smartphone you should be able to select a picture or pictures from your phone, and have an option to 'mail to' or 'send' or something?

    You would then have an email with the pictures that you could add text to, and then send in the usual way.

    I'm just learning a new Android phone, myself so haven't figured everything out yet, but if I open a picture on the phone, I have an option to 'share' and can then select email and it opens up an email and inserts the picture. I then just add recipient, subject, and the message and hit Send.

    Alternatively, I can open a picture, click the three dots, choose Copy to Clipboard, and then paste it into an email.

    I'm actually doing this on the phone with my left hand right now, and typing this post on the tablet with me right hand...that's your multitasking, innit?!

  • JoeSoap's Avatar
    Level 91
    @retrotecchie

    You are correct and that’s what I did. I couldn’t just email the photo straight to them though as I had to send it as a reply to their email. So, that’s why I emailed the photo to myself and then copied and pasted it into the reply to their email. It’s complicated but I had to continue with the email trail.

    Edit… I didn’t see the option to copy to clipboard so I’ll have to explore that one.
    Last edited by JoeSoap; 24-11-22 at 23:57.
  • retrotecchie's Avatar
    Level 92
    @JoeSoap

    The copy to clipboard option would possibly work then.

    Hit reply to their email, type your wordage, tab to your pictures, copy to clipboard and then paste into the reply.

    All new to me too, this phone malarkey...I even had to Google how to answer a call when it rings. I kept pressing the green button....no, you have to put a finger on it and then swipe it up the screen. Counterintuitive if you ask me!