[JoeSoap]

For the first time, to my knowledge, I have reversed account charges on my latest statement. Many have posted here looking for help on this matter and in order to advise, some of us have got our pencil and paper out to try to make sense of these things and to see if anything underhand is happening.

The first I knew is when I looked on my Eon Next app and saw I had been billed over £1300 for electricity. This statement appeared within a day or two of my normal monthly statement (which I hadn't yet received) and I figured that this statement was just that.

On reading the statement, which was just for electric, I then saw all the charges that had been re-applied for electricity used over the past year. These were then counteracted by a corresponding amount of reversed account charges.

I was able to simply look at my previous account balance at the top of the statement and subtract it from the new balance at the bottom of the statement to see what I had actually been charged against this statement. My new balance under normal circumstances should have been the sum of my opening balance and my monthly direct debit as there was no new usage recorded since my last statement. My actual balance was £2.29 more after taking into account the re-billing and the reversed charges.

So, this all worked out in my favour and to be honest, even if it was a few pounds the other way, I would have just accepted it.

A couple of things though...

I have smart meters and even if the odd reading isn't pulled, I submit a manual reading within a day or two. Why should there now be a discrepancy between the original billings and the recalculated ones?

Why isn't there some correspondence sent prior to the surprise statement alerting the account holder and to explain what has taken place and why?

I found it easy to work out as the new billings and reversed charges were all on the same statement so I wasn't left with a huge credit or debit balance at the bottom to get me excited or worried. I recall someone getting these reversed charges before they were re-billed for the original usage and immediately trying to claim the big credit balance at the bottom of the statement before being disappointed by customer service.

I now know that if I get a statement re-billing me without reversed charges on there to balance it out, or indeed a statement with reversed charges on there but without some re-billing charges, to hang fire for a day to see if another statement appears to even things out a bit before calling customer service.

Anyway, it's good to have experienced something that can cause unnecessary worry for some but I'm still baffled as to why these re-calculations have had to be done when I have smart meters and pay by monthly direct debit.

[meldrewreborn]

@JoeSoap

Hi Joe , good to hear from you. Likewise I’ve not experienced this, but there must be a reason why it happens. And it must be down to correcting readings at particular points in time, or corrections to pricing. Can you assist by looking at the changes quarter by quarter if it’s next flex , and identify what exactly has changed?

[JoeSoap]

@meldrewreborn

I wasn't going to delve too much but I had a look and in spite of having a whole year of reversed charges I narrowed the problem down to when I switched tariffs around 24 Feb 24. I also saw that I had some reversed charges back then due to being charged exit fees when I shouldn't have... but they were expected.

On the day before the switch, instead of trusting my smart meters to do the job, I submitted manual readings - just to be sure. That triggered a bill - but that in itself wasn't an issue. When I got my next scheduled statement I was billed at the old rate for the period between me submitting the manual readings and midnight (when they pulled smart readings) and then billed at the new rate thereafter. That's as it should be.

That charge of £2.43 (levied correctly at the old rate) has now been refunded in full but I don't see why it should have been as the charge for the usage wasn't replaced by any charge at all. I was also re-billed for some usage around the same time and charged an extra £0.14p so making me £2.29 better off. I can't work out this 14p difference as it involves calculations that were worked out down to a few decimal places and neither the old bill nor the new bill calculations seem to tally with my own calculations.

My conclusion is that things were correct as they were and I have now ended-up with half a day of free electricity covering the period between my manual reads and the smart reads several hours later. I won't be complaining.

From now on I'll trust the smart meters when I switch tariffs.

Afterthought... I wonder if the gas will be next and also if they'll discover things were in fact correct before and so go through all this again. The mind boggles.

[meldrewreborn]

@JoeSoap

You explanation makes sense. It’s not exactly rocket science when just one meter is involved the reading have to be sequential with no gaps in units or dates. But on change of meter an opportunity opens up! Still with some careful reconciliation all becomes clear. But from what you say that didn’t happen within Eon Next.. best to assume they got it right methinks 😇

[JoeSoap]

@meldrewreborn

My explanation making sense is a bonus as it was a bit long-winded.

As to Eon Next getting it right, I think they got it right a year ago but maybe I’ll never know for sure.

I’m a couple of quid better-off for now whatever and have experienced the joys of reversed charge confusion 😂

[Andy65]

@JoeSoap

I received a similar back bill on 20th February this year, covering September 2020 through to July 2023. I have gained just over a fiver but as you have said there's no explanation whatsoever.

The back billing is for electricity only. I picked an old bill at random to see if I can see what's changed and all that I can see is that the old bills only went to two decimal places (rounded up) and the revised bill is to three decimal places eg in May 2021 the bill show the day rate of 17.38 p/kWh and the revised bill is 17.378 p/kWh. I can only assume that this rounding up is the cause of the back billing as the meter reads are the same, but it's an assumption as there's no explanation.

You would think that with the recent publicity on incorrect back billing that they would go out of their way to at least explain the reason for it to the customer.

[JoeSoap]

@Andy65

I can only imagine a computer somewhere picking random accounts and running some programme that checks transactions over a long period and makes some complicated-looking corrections as it sees fit to bring the account up-to-date... as far as it is concerned, at least.

I think rounding up or down due to decimal places has some bearing on things but who knows 🤔

[meldrewreborn]

@JoeSoap

these events don’t seem to be that common, perhaps a human mk 1 eyeball is needed, before an account is adjusted.

[molerat]

I wonder if this will happen to me at some time. Looking back at when I switched from flex to a fix at the same time as a cap change I was billed for the first 4 days of the new cap, before the fix started, at the new cap rate with an unexplained credit which was actually the difference between the old cap and new increased cap. Something that is normal when a fix ends that you carry on at the old price if you take a new fix within 20 days of the old fix ending, something that does not really apply to a capped rate. If they did this I would owe £1.4something (cos their sums don't add up !) but no doubt it would run into a massive plus and minus calculation to arrive at that amount.

[JoeSoap]

@molerat

It might happen, I suppose. You never know your luck. At least you have an idea where any small discrepancy might lie to help you make sense of it all.