[ryane]

I would never recommend EON NEXT to anybody, I have been with British gas since the age of 18 and fancied a change. They told me for a year i was £1000 in credit which i was happy with, when I asked to lower my monthly direct debit they then said im actually £1300 in debt which im still
-£1,142.61 DR

[retrotecchie]

@ryane

Just out of interest, did you regularly submit meter readings monthly and keep a watchful eye on your account balance every month? Surely you would have known your consumption and how much you were being billed and could see if things were drifting off track?

If you had smart meters and just assumed they were sending readings, did your bills actually say smart reads or were any bills based on estimated readings?

There is usually a simple explanation why these things happen and I'm sorry to say that the usual culprits are the customer themselves not being proactive in managing their account or relying on smart technology which isn't as 'smart' as the adverts would have you believe.

[ryane]

They changed my direct debits from £175 a month to £5 without my permission or informing me, because I was in credit. I'm now £1300 in arrears I cannot wait to pay it off an leave this company I was with British Gas all of my life and fancied a change please do not I never write reviews these are a terrible company and customer service is just as bad

[retrotecchie]

@ryane

Surely if you were regularly submitting readings and tracking your account balance you would have seen straight away something was amiss? How long did you let it go on for until they did a massive recalculation and put you in the position you are now?

Yes, I agree that dropping the DD by that amount wasn't right, but if they didn't have any accurate consumption data to work with, then they can only work on the assumption that you were using far less energy than you actually were.

DD amounts ate usually calculated on your existing credit or debit balance and your assumed consumption over the next 12 month period. If the latter assumption was horribly wrong and you didn't notice things going off track in your account then you should have contacted them to see what was going on. Usually when there is any dramatic change to the DD, there will be an explanation somewhere on your statements.

I appreciate your issue, but regular monitoring of consumption and account balances would have flagged up any potential problems before they became major issues.

It's easy to assume that everything is ticking along nicely, but customers are just as responsible for managing their own accounts as the suppliers are, in my book.

E.On Next clearly made a big error in recalculating the DD erroneously, but that was something you should have spotted after a month or two and realised that, if left unchallenged, the mistake would compound as it clearly has.

The suppliers aren't perfect. Oh that they were. But customers really have to keep a finger on the pulse too.

[ryane]

Why would I have to submit meter readings with a smart meter? thats the whole of one so this doesn't happen.
I dont check my direct debits I agreed £175 with EON, they do not change so i know what i pay, who in the right mind uses £5 a month? and without my permission

[ryane]

As ive said was with British gas for 20 years exactly without any problems also i had a smart meter

[retrotecchie]

@ryane

Exactly.... who in their right mind uses £5 when the standing charges alone are a lot more than that. Of course I know that and you know that, so why didn't you query it at the time? How long ago did you switch from British Gas and did you confirm by looking at your monthly statements that the smart meter readings were actually reaching the supplier correctly, Older SMETS1 smart meters may not have been able to be be read by the new DCC systems and although attempts should have been made to get them to communicate, a lot of BG customers had meters that simply could not be migrated across. Your statements should have indicated that reads were estimated, and if so, then the onus would be on you to manually submit accurate manual reads in order to keep things on track.

I'm sorry you are in the position you are in, but it could have easily been avoided by regularly checking estimates versus actual and challenging the erroneous DD amount.

[Lee_EONNext]

@ryane Hey, first off apologies it's taken so long for one of us to reach out to you. Can I ask if you're still with us and has anyone in our Customer Services Department looked into this for you? If so what's been advised?

In terms of a Direct Debit change, we usually send an email/letter depending on preferences advising of any changes, so I would really like to look into that to understand why this wasn't received.

I would also like to look into what @retrotecchie has explained and did we lose communications somewhere along the line and reads stopped? Either way someone needs to look at this, either myself or customer service?

Can you pop me a message with an update please? I'm happy to discuss via DM also if you wish?

Thanks, I hope to hear from you soon.

[meldrewreborn]

@retrotecchie

I agree with your analysis. If a customer just assumes that everything is fine when there’s clear evidence to the contrary then they are more than jointly responsible for the outcome.

looking on the bright side arrears don’t carry interest and the money to be paid now is less valuable than when the energy was used.
@ryane can make a complaint to Eon Next if they consider they’re hard done by, and take that to the ombudsman if the outcome isn’t satisfactory. There’s nothing to lose and possibly much to gain by doing so.