Forum Topic

EDF - Mail Online

It would seem from today’s Mail Online that some EDF customers are being overcharged and find, eg, their “monthly standing order is going up from £300 to £39,000 a month”. “Fury as customers including Jon Sopel discover their electricity bills have surged dramatically”.(Jon Sopel is a reporter). “Jon Sopel said his monthly standing order was rising from £152 to £19,274” The artist, Grayson Perry, said EDF had tried to take “£40,000 from his bank account through a Direct Debit for a single month’s worth of energy usage” Members of the public were saying they had been overcharged and were receiving threatening letters through the door. One lady had moved from EDF to Octopus and her monthly bills had gone from £900 to £120. This is very similar to my complaints about OVO Energy.  Trustpilot reviews on OVO Energy show people are in absolute despair because the energy company call centres are totally useless.  People are facing massive bills that seem to have been conjured up out of thin air. Where is Ofgem in all this?  I think the Government and Ofgem need to step in and sort out OVO Energy and EDF.

Martine Guy ● 554d5 Comments

My understanding is that on some Pay-as-you-go meters you can use the emergency credit button which will effectively boost your credit by a set amount. Useful for example you run out of electricity in the middle of the night and shops are not open etc.There is also the case that older PAYGO meters need to be updated with the latest tariff and if this is done retrospectively it means customers may have to pay back the difference on energy that they have already used and possibly paid for.PAYGO rates for years were a lot higher than other rates. The emphasis has always been on switching to cheaper tariffs which is not applicable for PAYUGO customers or many elderly customers.In short for decades with energy those that can least afford it end up paying more whilst those well off actually pay less.There have been some recent change on this by the Government that I have not looked into - hopefully not many devils in the detail:"Prepayment meter customers to pay less for energy from todayPrepayment meter households will no longer pay more on average for their energy than direct debit customers, as the government scraps unfair charge."https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prepayment-meter-customers-to-pay-less-for-energy-from-today

Ed Robinson ● 553d

Well done, Ed, for sticking with it and getting money back I feel really sorry for the vulnerable who aren’t putting their heating/hot water on because of the huge bills they are getting.  People are saying they are racking up hundreds of pounds of debt, yet they are on a pay as you go payment system.  I don’t know how it’s possible. Nobody is standing up for the consumer.  It seems to me that the energy companies are ignoring complaints because no one is doing anything to sort them out.  Lots of management speak and touchy feely language from the energy companies about reaching out to help or making a note of complaints,but it’s a load of hot air.  Ofgem is a pathetic disgrace!

Martine Guy ● 553d

I eventually after many months and numerous Whatapps messages, videos & photos got almost £1,000 (which included £70 compensation I think) back from EON Next. This was due to billing errors despite having a smart meter. Wrong tariff applied & double smart meter readings but nothing that should have taken months.Every new bill would have incorrect adjustments applied relative to the previous month's bill which was itself incorrect. A few months of that and you have a bills several pages long that are just not readable.It was fairly simple with a spreadsheet to go back to an earlier point in time before it all went wrong and work out the actual cost based on readings and the applicable tariff minus any credits.I guess that they have relatively few people that can actually look at such issues.To me it was very annoying but to others it could have tipped them over the edge giving the other cost of living pressures etc.

Ed Robinson ● 553d

It is a leading story on today’s MailOnline, with plenty of EDF customers backing up the experiences of Jon Sopel and Grayson Perry with their own stories of massive overcharging.  I will be interested to see if refunds are issued and I find it really concerning that the energy companies can help themselves to such huge amounts of money from their customers’ bank accounts.  Because Jon Sopel and Grayson Perry are fairly well known, the story has got a lot of publicity.   A similar story from EDF and OVO customers is how their bills are in credit and then suddenly they find themselves owing hundreds of pounds. What are Ofgem and the Conservatives/Labour parties going to say or do about this daylight robbery by the energy companies?  I believe that I have lost around £2,000 to OVO Energy who sent me incomprehensible bills, and when you write to them they don’t reply, or if you phone them, their overseas call centres are useless and are only concerned with getting more money from you.  I decided to cut our losses and move to Octopus Energy, as I could see our bills were going to keep mounting up with no hope of getting a refund.

Martine Guy ● 553d

I heard Grayson Perry on the radio this morning talking about it.  They took so much money out of his account with so many bills at one time that they emptied it.  If he had had more in it I expect they would have taken that as well.  There can be a problem when companies rely too much on AI dealing with matters - and do not have enough real living management to keep a check.  It is made far worse when you cannot contact a real person (although apparently many people think they are talking to one) when they contact the companies to query or complain.Energy IS very expensive and generally still uses a lot of fossil fuel which is why the fact that we have the leakiest buildings in Europe is a problem and we need experts to help  safely insulate them so that more problems are not created because many of our homes are constructed from brick and wood and rotting timbers need to be avoided.For people interested in retrofitting there is a exhibition happening in March at the Excel which you might want to investigate.  The last Govt initiative was not very successful due to a lack of experienced operatives.

Philippa Bond ● 553d