Eon Additional Charge

[batman1956]

Just had a call from the ombudsman.

 

Good news they are taking this complaint forward and have advised us that they are doing this after several similar complaints.

 

I now urge people to complain to the ombudsman if they have been similarly affected. If this gets resolved in our favour this should stop companies trying to walk over their customers.

[batman1956]

Today's missive from the ombudsman

 

 

YOUR COMPLAINT ABOUT E.ON

Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today and confirming that you will accept the

actions agreed with the company, by the Ombudsman, in full and final settlement of your

complaint.

In order to provide you with reassurance, your complaint has been independently reviewed in

accordance with our Terms of Reference. As you know, your case will help the Energy

Ombudsman to work closely with this particular energy company and the regulator Ofgem, to

ensure lessons have been learnt through every complaint in order to drive forward

improvements to previous shortfalls in services.

For the avoidance of doubt E.ON is now required to:

• provide a written explanation about E.ON’s billing policy and the timescales for applying late

payment charges;

• confirm it has removed all historical late payment charges from the account;

• provide a letter of apology for any shortfall in E.ON’s service experienced by you as its

customer; and

• clearly explain how late payment fees can be avoided in the future.

We also looked at you allowing an estimated bill to be received and then provide meter readings

which would then activate a new bill to be produced. You should then be able to pay the

accurate bill within the timeframe stipulated in the Terms and Conditions (payment is due

immediately).

The above actions outline the Final Decision made by the Energy Ombudsman. In accordance

with our procedures, the company has 28 days to confirm it has implemented the remedies

above.

The Ombudsman is pleased there is a satisfactory outcome to your complaint and your case

reference number will now be closed.

If you are not happy that the company has completed the actions above after 28 days, please

contact me and I will take your case through our remedy implementation procedures.

Yours sincerely

I still feel that this does not go far enough so I have replied

 

Having had time to read through your letter and your requirements for EON please note that there are still several discrepancies.

 

Firstly there is no requirement for EON to provide a breakdown of how the £10 charge was arrived at. This is against OFT guidelines which state that these charges cannot be a penalty but must reflect the true cost of a late payment.

 

Whilst I appreciate that some requirement should be placed on EON to explain how late payment charges could be avoided this is totally irrelevant where the original terms and conditions as in my case make no provision for ANY late payment charges.

 

I have carefully studied my Terms and Conditions and am at a loss to find anything which states that payment is due immediately, it clearly gives a period on the monthly bill for an "early payment discount" therefore logically speaking a payment cannot be deemed late within this early payment discount period.

 

Obviously I feel strongly about this whole episode and am keen to make sure that in the future there can be no repetition of these events so I would be most grateful if you could add the above issues to your requirements (suitably worded of course)

Like I have said before I don't intend to give up.

[DumbRottie]

And did you get anywhere with this?

I have already paid my bill but now have a letter from eon under their UDS letterhead telling me that they may disconnect my supply unless I pay them £10.

Perhaps I should dispute it and invoice them for £20 for the inconvenience.

Perhaps like Centrica they are going to leave the country if they don't like having their horns pulled in. Now, where did I leave that spare packing material?

[batman1956]

It ended after the letter from the Ombudsman as shown above.Eon subsequently tried again to levy the £10 charge for a later bill but immediately removed it. I would assume rightly or wrongly that Eon have as you say had their horns pulled in.