EOn & Ombudsman v me?

[Aprd]

Ok, not sure if anyone can help me here or point me in the right direction.

 

We used Eon for combined fuels for two or so years. When we first transferred to them from NPower they set our direct debit at £44.00 per month. We live in a 2 bedroom end terrace house has recently been modernised, thus double glazed and so on.

3 months after transferring we noticed our bill increasing and that the monthly direct debit wasn't covering our usage.

 

We contacted EOn on 4th January 2007 and raised our concerns to be told don't worry as its winter; during the summer months this will balance out as your consumption will decrease.

 

 

We contacted them again in May 2007 and raised our concerns again to be given the same answer. Two weeks later we then received an amendment to our direct debit increasing it from £44 pounds per month to £144 pound per month, which now created hardship within our family unit.

 

 

We then logged a complaint with the Consumer Direct who intervened and managed to get the DD reduced to £96 pounds per month, which was still a little high for us to manage on my wages but we did.

 

 

However, our bill was still increasing and no one in EOn could explain what was different between our house and the other 124 houses around me (they were all modernised together). We asked for our meters to be checked only to be informed it would cost around £90 and if they weren’t found to be faulty that cost would be deferred to us.

 

 

We then switched to British Gas (i know, i didn't know at that point...) and logged another complaint with Consumer Direct regarding our case with EOn.

 

 

Under a special circumstance, the Energy Ombudsman decided to investigate our case.

 

April this year the Energy Ombudsman found in favour EOn as they had no records showing that I attempted to make contact before May 2007. They said if we could prove that we did contact them then they would re-investigate.

 

Below is a link to their findings.

 

 

http://img4.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=eonombudsman11092.jpg

 

 

Now I'm somewhat amazed at their response as I was under the impression it was down to the companies to prove that we never contacted them, not down to me to prove I did, however, we have and they this was the findings?

 

 

The second bit I'm somewhat confused about is the administration error for not billing us for a period, we had no idea of this until it was mentioned in this letter.

 

 

Any help would be very much appreciated, sorry I rambled on.

 

Additional Note: I am totally lost to their comment regarding not being billed from January to April, we have bills for that period which were sent with our orginal complaint to the ombudsman.

Edited October 1, 2009 by Aprd

[Guest Old_andrew2018]

Bump

[Aprd]

Any thoughts on this please?

Edited October 6, 2009 by Aprd

[nottslad]

With payment adequacy, EON and any other supplier only have to review the payments once every 18 months to be compliant with the Energy Retail Association's Code of Practice for Accurate Bills (Billing Code).

 

From your notes above, it appears the payments were reviewed, hence the request for the increase in you Direct Debit. Whilst it is somewhat unfair that you have ended up with a debt on the account, it is for a supply that has been used and therefore requires payment, as a gesture of goodwill, I would expect the supplier to spread repayment of the balance over the period of time it took for the debt to accrue