An 81-year-old widower by the name of DG is struggling with a chronic condition from an energy-related illness. All these problems have arisen since he moved to E.ON Next four months ago. Now he’s trapped paying for somebody else’s ride. At the same time, he’s facing a tsunami of bad messaging from every other energy player.
DG’s woes started when a routine boiler maintenance visit identified issues with his gas payments. A few weeks later, he got a letter. It threatened to have him pay £129.19, plus a £15 late fee for being in default of his duties. Confused and concerned, DG inquired about obtaining a receipt for the cheque he’d sent for the actual purchase price.
To make matters more confusing, his former supplier Ovo Energy was unable to tell him if DG’s monthly electricity bill had reached it. In subsequent email correspondence, Ovo told him the matter might take 14 to 18 months to resolve. This broad uncertainty has compounded stress on DG’s already fraught billing situation.
Regardless of these obstacles, DG hand-delivered a £140 cheque payment to a local branch in order for his account to remain open. After this payment, he still found an outstanding balance on his account due to a prior transaction made by card. These frustrations deepened when British Gas randomly wrote off £238 from his account. Next, they gave him a cheque made out to “Mr Estate of Walter Turner,” further befuddling his understanding of his own financial situation.
DG has accrued an impressive £1,896 credit on his British Gas, not surprisingly a fairly large amount! He’s had a hard time reporting issues related to it. After six months of being passed around from customer service representative to representative with Ovo, he was finally able to get some resolution. Ovo even took ownership of the delays a convoluted internal process had caused. As a goodwill gesture, they pre-emptively waived the £15 late payment fee.
DG’s experience is not unique. E.ON Next allegedly takes an average of 20 months to fix a transposed meter. This convoluted process highlights the larger obstacles consumers encounter when making their way through the energy ecosystem.
The intricacy of DG’s case exemplifies the many challenges that exist within the energy space. One executive from one of those companies indicated that “any number of factors” can lead to billing differences. They further underscored how these factors contribute to a discouragingly slow pipeline.