When my mother died of cancer, my aunt adopted me. She, too, died of cancer in 2024. At 26, I am now alone and struggling to deal with enormous, nonsensical energy bills from E.ON Next.
In 2022, I discovered my aunt had been paying massively inflated bills for the flat I shared with her, so I had the account closed and a new one set up in my name. An E.ON agent took meter readings, a smart meter was installed, and a final bill sent showing the account was more than £6,000 in credit. E.ON wouldn’t let me have it in cash, so the credit was transferred to the new account and used to pay the bills for the next two years.
Fast forward to 2024 and, after my aunt’s death, it deducted £3,360 from the credit for energy used since early 2022. I complained and, a month later, received a bill for £12,960 in the name of my late mother who had been the account holder before her death in 2015. This sum was for energy going back to May 2021. I contested this, and it sent debt collectors.
The Energy Ombudsman intervened, got the £12,960 bill cancelled, and ordered E.ON to comply with back-billing regulations, but it has not repaid the £3,360.
SA, London
I have spent hours poring over the various bills and admit myself baffled. Charges are repeatedly reversed and reapplied. Balances wildly fluctuate. In October 2022, when the £6,000 credit was applied to your new account, the opening statement from E.ON estimated your annual gas and electricity cost to be £23,200. This fantasy figure may explain why your aunt was being charged up to £1,000 a month in the years before her death.
Since the smart meter was installed in 2022, you have been using about £150 a month of energy, about right for a single person in a three-bedroom flat.
The £3,360 arrears that E.ON conjured up in July 2024 also make no sense. Not only are energy companies forbidden to charge for unbilled consumption dating back more than 12 months, the smart meter was relaying readings back to the company for 20 of the months they then insisted were owing.
E.ON’s responses to my questions, teased out over several weeks, are as mystifying as its bills. It claims that the £6,000 credit on your aunt’s account was based on incorrect estimated readings. That, says the company, is why it couldn’t be cashed in by you – yet due to human error, it was transferred to your new E.ON account.
Your aunt’s credit balance was, it says, actually £2,633 in 2022. After that blunder, it admits it then incorrectly billed you for an outstanding balance accrued outside the back-billing deadline.
Meanwhile, your new smart meter was malfunctioning, it claims, and you were being undercharged. That is apparently how the £3,360 debt arose in 2024, though no one thought to explain this to you.
E.ON apologised for its “shortcomings” and told me it had since “enhanced” its bereavement policy. It says: “We have applied back-billing protection to both the old and new accounts, cleared all outstanding balances, removed any negative credit reference data and issued a goodwill payment.”
Given the catalogue of blunders, it is impossible to know if the £3,360 deduction is correct. It certainly seems very high. You insist that money should not have been deducted.
As you have already tried the Energy Ombudsman, I suggest you take the paperwork to Citizens Advice to see if you have a legal case. What is certain is that E.ON’s errors and insouciance would be appalling by any standards, but it is especially shocking when a bereaved young customer is at the receiving end.
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