[meldrewreborn]

That the meter failed is an inherent risk with a battery powered gas meter. The response though is under E.On Next’s control.

get started on you complaint. It’s not as though failures like this can’t be predicted in scale.

[DaveP]

Day 3 without Gas. 44 Hrs and counting. Last night the phone rang till my battery went flat with no answer. The people answering the phone must have popped to the toilet or something.

I got two SMS messages through the night. They said 'Nice to chat and can I leave some feedback in a survey' Mmmm. I think i will.

Anyway back on the phone again and, what a shock, I'm still in a queue.

Looking at the meter, I wonder if unplugging it would reset it or is it like a smoke alarm where it is battery power only. I can't see it being battery only as it has been in place for decades. I'll have a look when it gets light.

[retrotecchie]

@DaveP

Gas meters are battery only. You can't unplug 'em. The batteries have a ten year life, so yours has possibly already been changed once or twice. I'll tag @DebF_EONNext for you to see if she can kick anyone's backside for you.

[DaveP]

retrotechie, Thanks for the info. I did think after I posted that it may have a long life battery. After all there isn't that much of a power requirement. Although I have been getting readings for a month which activates it. Also someone could come around and replace it and I wouldn't know really. I know that it has been read a few times by people for various reasons.

If it is a battery problem then you would think there would be some facility to ensure that people weren't cut off when it neared the end of its life. Beeping for a while like smoke alarms might have been a good idea. I'll await for the engineer to find out.

Anyway, latest update, over 48 hours without gas. I got to speak to another nice person as well. Although she did say that should would chase up when an engineer would arrive and get back to me. Here I am three hours later and no update so I'm not holding my breath for an engineer turning up.

I find it hard to believe that there is absolutely nothing I can do about this except chase up and be polite when I want to rant. Although it isn't fair to do it to the poor sap answering the phone there isn't anyone else to speak to and the surveys don't really convey the contempt I have for this useless company.

Now hanging on the phone again. What a farce this emergency line is.

[retrotecchie]

@DaveP

Put in for your £30 compensation for your meter not being repaired within the prescribed time limit. Put in for your second £30 compensation if the First is not paid within ten working days.

Citizens Advice says this:

If you have a prepayment meter

If the screen is blank or showing a message such as ‘error’, ‘call help’ or ‘battery’, there’s probably a fault with the meter. Tell your supplier straight away or you could be left with no energy.
They must send someone out to repair or replace the meter within:

• 3 hours on a working day (Monday to Friday except bank holidays)
• 4 hours on a non-working day

The supplier doesn’t have to send someone out if they can fix the problem remotely - but they must do this within the same time.
If you need to top up your meter while you're waiting for your supplier, they should provide you with replacement tokens.
If your supplier doesn’t take appropriate action within the time they must pay you £30 compensation within 10 working days. If they don't pay you on time they have to pay an extra £30 for the delay.

[DaveP]

Whoo Hoo. 50 Hours after the gas went off it is now back.

Took 2 mins to get working and luckily we tested my card as I was convinced that putting that in brought it down. Which it did again immediately, luckily the guy was there to reset again.

Seems that when I topped the gas up last time I went to a different shop and for some reason the card was reprogrammed whatever than means. Therefore the programming in the meter said that it wouldn't use it and instead of rejecting the card, which any sensible programmer would have done the system shut off my gas instead.

Unbelievable. What bunch of idiots thought that would be a good idea? To cut off someone's gas because a card was inserted that was not what is expected.

Now it appears that as my card is corrupt. The cash on it unavailable to me. The engineer will order another which will take 2 days and I will have to claim back the credit on it. As I'd topped up for Christmas so that £100 out of play for a week.

I'll certainly be chasing this up and thank you all for your feedback.

retrotecchie, 4 Hour response. Bliss. I'll certainly be raising this with EON.

[Anasa_EONNext]

Hello @DaveP Anasa here 👋 I'm sorry to hear that you've had to wait a while for your appointment and it took some time to get hold of us, we have been extremely busy with emergencies and the engineers that we use are not direct employees for EON but work for all other suppliers as well and sometimes the nearest engineer could be 4 or 5 hours away from you but they work hard to get to every customers as fast as they can, also weather, traffic and lots of things a long the way can also cause delays and sometimes jobs are prioritised a long the way if a vulnerable customer was in need so the wait times can be a little unpredictable.

The average call wait time at the weekend was well over an hour so its not unusual for long call waits

I'm glad that are back on supply now and you will get your money back and enough money on your meter to keep you on supply until then. We always appreciate feedback and its great to hear your story as you can imagine there will be quite a few people in the same situation and your customer journey experience both good and bad could help someone out.😊

[DaveP]

@Anasa_EONNext Thanks for the response. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't really help me that much as it is full of all the usual jargon, customer journey experience makes it sound so exciting and I was wondering how while I was hanging on the emergency line on Sunday that they knew I was a low priority.

I was waiting to see what happened with the card before I responded again. Well, here I am day 3 and no replacement card. I'm now back hanging on the phone to get a new card delivered. I'm lucky in that I had a few quid on it. What would have happened if I had hit this when the credit was at zero?

I do understand about seasonal changes and support teams, I've set up and managed quite a few and there is always outliers, a few that get the dirty end of the stick. To them, me in this case, it means terrible service. From the time I spent and am still spending hanging on the phone I think there are a lot of outliers in EON which means your support staff are simply understaffed. Looking at reducing costs in one of the few areas you can. What if lots of customers freeze for a while?

[meldrewreborn]

@DaveP

Touch wood, I’ve credit meters for both fuels so I’ve not had to contact customer services at all recently even the EPG changes and winter discounts have worked.
I’ve been posting on here for almost a year and there were complaints over call wait times right from the beginning. The price rises in April 2022 and October 2022, the latter of which coincided with the EPG and the monthly discounts ramped up the pressures considerably.
Many of the calls will be from customers with trivial issues or just enquires, but they result in long queues for those with urgent and emergency situations. The alleged shortage of engineers could be solved quite quickly by scaling back the installation of Smart meters, but customer services need more better trained staff - a not unreasonable target should be be solve issues in just the one call, but I doubt that currently many get that level of service.
others have recommended email with key important words in the subject line “ off supply, no credit, prepayment, “ etc as apparently these trigger priority filters for priority attention.

I hope you situation is resolved soon, but I’ll not be surprised if it isn’t. Complaints need to be raised to try to force suppliers into better customer services.