basil --- Energywatch has a business team that is dedicated to business users, take your complaint and concerns up with them, they have helped in other cases.

http://www.energywatch.org.uk/bst/index.asp

I typed E-ON complaints into the search engine and your post came up. I dont know if there are any business users reading this post but I have a problem with my shop bills and like you the attitude I am facing from E-0n is the same.

In July 2006 EON replaced a meter which supplies my deli. The landlords were at the time receiving the bills in their name and forwarding them to us for payment. As they were at the same time selling the property to another company, we took the opportunity to ask Eon to bill us direct and gave them all the details. In Jan 2007 the first bill came with an estimated reading of 8 and service charge, £72.00. We are very busy running the shop and did not expect a bill so small but not long after they read the meter and we expected a proper bill. We were used to paying about £700 per qtr.

No bill arrived and we phoned them and they said they did not have us on the system We pointed out that we had a small bill from them but they had got the address slightl wrong[which they havent changed to this day].We had another meter reading in May and the weeks passed by with still no bill. We called again and I wish I had logged these calls with the respondents name etc.

When the bill arrived in Nov 07 with a reading for May.........it was for £20,000.00. I rang them and they said something is wrong not to worry and someone would check the meter was a six digit no. They did that and confirmed it was the right meter but still not to worry because it was far too high to be correct. I offered to send copies of previous bills but they said it wasnt necessary. Weeks passed and we kept phoning a speaking to different people and they asked us to get an electrician to test all the appliances and the amp for each phase which we did and sent it to them. Another bill came in for £25,000.00. It was so ridiculous I really didnt worry too much, I thought they were genuinley trying to find answers. I knew that we would need to pay the similar kind of bill to the one prior to the new meter but they said I was to pay nothing until they got to the bottom of it. Christmas was arriving and we close for a few days, they said that after Xmas they would install a check meter if I agreed at a cost of £100. I readily said yes. It was after we agreed that I got a call from the collections dept saying I must pay £4000.00 immediately. I said, no problem I will send it by BACS.no they said you must pay it by credit card today or face being disconnected. I was furious, not because I had to pay ,but because of the different messages, there seems to be no communication between depts.

Shortly after another bill arrives for £34,000.00 and I have by now recorded the calls and correspondence and written to the Director of Customer Services, yet have not had a reply.

To keep it short, a check meter was installed 2 weeks ago and it is speeding along at the same rate as the meter and on telling them this their attitude has changed. There are no more 'dont worry' reassurances. It has changed to 'well if the check meter proves the other meter is correct, you will have to pay it!!

Well the bill is now £40,000.00 for 18 months use, and I face losing the business if this what they will charge. The bills prior to them changing the meter were £5,000 per year and now £20000,00 for 9 months.

I say that if I had a bill in the first quarter, I would have seen the change and questioned it earlier, they say 'tough, you had the chance to negotiate a contract when the meter was changed'. I said I had no idea that anything would be different to before and they wont listen. I would contact Watchdog but dont think they help business users.

As you can imagine I can hardly function at the moment with the thought of losing the business and 12 jobs will go

Help

It can't be right. I had a one gigantic storage heater in a two bedroom good sized flat and economy 7 or not, I still ran it in the day time on accident loads of times and my bill was nothing like yours. We only left in December so the rates can't be that different. All through November and December I had loads of family over as well, and they burned through the gas and leccy. We paid 92.00 a month at the end of it, but when we closed the account we found out they had been charging us twice what we needed to pay and recieved nearly a £1,000 back. So on average we were only spending £45 a month. I know how much heat storage heaters give off and unless your roof was missing there is no way you should be using that much. I've heard similar stories of meters going whacko and eating insane amounts of money on Watchdog. The woman they reported on also spent ages trying to get through.

My advice is to start making real threats, legal action. Start reporting this to watchdog, and certainly make sure you have no way for them to obtain money. In another incident where we were wrongly charged for something, we contacted the police who gave us a reference number and told us that if we were ever contacted by that agency again, to give the police another call because it was illegal. 6 months later we got a refund and an apology out of thin air. You could also threaten the fact that this is a team effort; you as well as the current tentant are the ones to suffer so if you made a lawsuit (or the threat of one) it's doubled in size. Also don't forget to let them know that they are being reported to the likes of Watchdog and other media, maybe it will work or maybe it won't but I know that in my time it's the only thing that's gotten life sorted fast. Don't give up, and thank you for letting us know!

Unfortunately eon are probably right in what they've told You. When your landlord put in storage heaters he should have told eon so they could fit economy seven meters. These split your usage into what you use during the day and night with the night rate being cheaper. As storage heaters use loads of energy and heat up in the night your meter would jump hugely. If you had an economy seven the amount of units used would probably have been the same but you would have been charged at a cheaper nightnrate, but without the proper meter your usage has not been split between night and day. It's definitely not your fault but I would give energywatch another try but in my opinion the blame lies with your landlord.

I have been having trouble with eon/powergen for the last 4 months.

I was living in a rented 1 bed flat with storage heaters for a year. It was the first time that I had lived on my own and been responsible for utility bills so I had no idea how much electricity would cost. I didn't want to get in to debt so I started paying £40 a month online so when I did recieve my electric bill I would not owe a lot. I had paid £120 before I had recieved my first bill. When I recieved my first bill I still owed £164.49 which I paid. I decided to set up a direct debit in march 2007. The minimum monthly payment was £77.50. I paid this for 3 months at which point the eon website advised me that I could lower my payments to £31.50 each month as my account was always in credit. I paid at this rate until January 2008 and my account was still in credit.

I moved house In January and sent eon my meter reading for my final bill just incase I owed them anything. I recieved my final bill via email about 3 days later. I almost passed out when I looked at it, the final bill was for £1068.38.

I had submitted a meter reading in june 2007 so this huge bill was from a period of around 6 months. I immediatley rang eon to find out how my final electric bill for my 1 bed flat could be so high as I had never missed a payment and I was paying the ammount that their website recommended and they said they would look into it. I heard nothing for a while so I contacted them again to see if they had found anything out to be told they were still looking into it. I eventually recieved a phone call about 2 weeks later they had still not discovered why the bill is so high. The lady assured me that a bill this size for a 1 bed flat must be incorrect which gave me some relief. The lady said she needed to speak to someone else in her department and she would be back in contact with me. I heard nothing for a couple of weeks then a call to tell me they were still looking into it. Another couple of weeks later I recieved a call from eon's debt recovery agency demanding the money. I explained that this was being looked into by eon and I was waiting for a reply from them. I rang eon immediatley and they said they would put my account on hold and assured me that I would not recieve another call from the debt collectors. A week later I recieved a threatening letter from the debt collectors so I rang eon again and they told me to ignore it as they were still looking into it. I recieved a few more calls from eon telling me they still hadn't got to the bottom of this yet.

I know the person that moved into the flat after I moved out and I had made him aware of my problem so he has been closely monitoring the electric meter. In the first 5 days of my friend moving into the flat the meter reading had gone up by around 1000 units which works out at around £90. I contacted eon again and they said they would send an engineer out to investigate which they never did.

Eon rang me after another couple of weeks and told me that the reason my bill was so high is because the storage heaters in the flat are not on economy 7 and are heating up at standard rate. They also told me that this is not their problem it is between me and the landlord of the flat and that the landlord didnt inform them that he was putting storage heaters in. There are 4 storage heaters in the flat of which only 2 work and they look as though they have been there for many years.

I called the landlord and informed him of my situation and that eon were saying that the problem is because the heaters are not on economy 7 and he told me that this is nonsense if there was a problem he would have known by now. I thought the same thing myself, the heaters have been there for years surely if someone who lived there before me recieved bills like this they would have something to say about it.

I have made countless phone calls to eon regarding this matter and they keep telling me the same thing over and over. To this point no engineer has been round to the flat to investigate so how they can tell me that the problem is due to the wrong meter being fitted without even looking is beyond me. For all I know the meter could not be working properly or I could have read the wrong meter as there are 3 meters in the electric cupboard. 1 meter has dials on (the one I took my readings from) and 2 digital meters one with high and one with low written on them (economy 7 meters) which eon think belong to the flat upstairs but are not entirely sure. The flat upstairs has central heating so it is a totally different set up to mine.

Eon told me that an engineer had been round last week and investigated but when I spoke to my friend who lives there he told me that this was untrue and there had been no such visit.

I contacted energy watch to make a complaint only to be passed over to eons complaint department and told the same thing "The flat has the wrong type of electric meter it is a single rate not economy 7". After getting off the phone to eon complaints department I recieved another call from the debt collectors. I informed them that I had reported my problem to energy watch and they asked me for my energy watch reference number which I gave them and they left it at that.

The next day the debt collectors rang me again demanding the money. I told them that I had given them my energy watch reference the day before to which they replied eon have updated my account and instructed them to chase me for the money. I rang eon again and told them that the debt collectors are hassling me and I demanded that this problem be resolved immediatly only to be told the same again, "wrong meter".

They have still not sent an engineer to the flat and they have still not lifted a finger to help me, all they have done is fobbed me off and gave my details to debt collectors.

If I felt that this bill was correct and I believed that it was possible to use over 11000kwh in a 1 bed flat in 6 months then I would sort a way to repay without hesitation, however I do not believe this bill to be anywhere near correct so I dont feel it fair that I be put through this stress and worry through something that is no fault of my own.

Eon have told me that they have put a hold on my account for a month so the debt collectors wont bother me until then.

THEN WHAT????????????????