Prepayment meter faulty, massive final demand, eon

[niyaman]

first I will describe the problem,

 

I am paying for gas by prepayment meter ,

the prepayment screen on the meter is blank and it will not except payment by the card,

the meter gas reading still works and there is gas supplied even without payment via the card, it's been like this for at least two years.

 

I recently transferred to another supplier for both gas and electricity.

 

I was sent a final estimated bill for nearly two and a half thousand pounds from my former supplier,

 

assuming that I will have to pay them something my questions are:

1 can they calculate an arbituary estimate which I must pay or should it be based on actual readings from meter,

I have noticed on some of my previous statements that they indicate that I have submitted readings to them which I haven't done.

 

2 can I make them send me documentation of the period that they are charging for and the calculation of the fee for that period.

 

3 with the rules of them not being able to back charge beyond the last twelve months,

how could they accuratly calculate how much was used during that period.

 

4 The point of being on a prepayment meter is not to get into debt,

is part or all of the fault down to the former supplier

and should they have to accept all or some of the the losses incurred

 

5 if I have to pay would they except payment by installments

 

niyaman

[unclebulgaria67]

Did you ever inform them of the faulty meter ? If not and you have used fuel for free, then you will get charged for the relevant period, based on previous annual uasge in terms of units. The 12 month back billing would not apply, if you knew of the fault, but failed to tell them. You can probably negotiate instalments, but before that you should follow their complaints process and get a detailed response about how the amount was calculated.

 

Your new supplier needs to know of the faulty meter and that it needs replacing.

 

Apparently according to online reports, some people have tampered around with prepayment meters to obtain free fuel and perhaps this may have happened before you moved in. It can be done, so you would not immediately know looking at the meter. Only on further inspection, it is revealed that a part has been altered or changed.

[niyaman]

thanks for your advice unclebulgaria67

i sent a quick reply back but i don't see it in the thread,

so I'm resending it again,

i will contact them regarding a detailed response about how the amount was calculated,

during the time this was all occuring i was away for log periods of time,

i had left a house sitter who was suppose to pay for the gas he used with my payment card

he has informed me that the card did work at the bigginging but then stop all of a sudden and since then he hasn't paid anything,

now that i'm back permanently i have to pickup the pieces.

the estimated amount of kilowatt used is down by about 4000

should i inform eon or continue to use the eon estimate and pay them for that amount

and i assume the remainder would be charged by my current provider and payed weekly via the payment card or by installments or whatever method we workout.

niyaman

[E.ON Company Rep: Helena]

Hi niyaman,

 

This would need to be investigated properly and I'd suggest talking to our pre-payment department as soon as possible.

 

May I just check, are we the supplier you've received the final bill from? And you've now changed away from us?

 

unclebulgaria67 makes some excellent points, the 12 month back billing code may not apply if we haven't been told about the meter not working correctly and we'd have to produce a bill for the amount of energy that's been used.

 

Did you report the faulty meter to us?

 

However, if you can take accurate reads from the meter it's much better that we use these rather than estimates.

 

You should have been getting statements to show what's been used between which dates and the meter reads used.

 

We may offer a payment arrangement, but I can't say for you.

 

To be honest though, I'm just trying to give you a bit of info as this account would need to be fully investigated to establish what's actually going on. Only then decisions can be made about the billing code and payment arrangements etc.

 

As I say, contact the Pre-payment guys as soon as you can and I hope it's sorted quickly for you.

 

Helena

[niyaman]

hi Helena

thanks for replying,

yes i received a final bill from eon and i have a new supplier courtesy of my previous house sitter

as far as i known he did not report the faulty meter.

i will be contacting the Pre-payment people.

thanks again.

niyaman

[E.ON Company Rep: Helena]

Thank you niyaman,

 

Brilliant and I hope you get things sorted asap.

 

Helena