I am having the most absurd argument with E.ON after the power firm’s smart meter installation wrecked our five-year-old gas boiler and it then refused to pay for the repairs.
It started when we moved our gas and electricity supply to E.ON in April. Our new tariff required us to get a smart meter for each and so in August E.ON’s contractor, Morrison Utility Services, arrived to install them. But when it turned the electricity supply back on after installation, our previously working boiler would not restart.
Fortunately, we still had boiler insurance with SSE and its contractor managed to fix the faulty circuit board that was seemingly damaged by a power surge during the installation. Had we been warned of this risk before the installation I don’t think we’d have gone ahead.
Since then, we have been trying to get E.ON to reimburse us the £90 we had to pay SSE. Calls with E.ON’s various departments have got us nowhere and it is flatly refusing to pay, except for a £20 goodwill gesture.
EE, London
E.ON is badgering thousands of customers to allow it to install smart meters – I know because I am one of them. But there are so many cases of boilers not restarting after a smart meter installation I’ve decided that it’s not worth the risk. The fact that E.ON refused to help someone whose boiler was less than six years old only accentuates this view.
I asked E.ON to take a second look and it still refused to help, even after I pointed out that it would cost it more that the paltry £90 you were asking to fight the case at the ombudsman or elsewhere.
“The gas engineers’ report confirmed the fault was with a part of the boiler – the printed circuit board – that we had absolutely no interaction with during the installation,” E.ON says, avoiding the obvious point – that the boiler was working perfectly well before the installation.
Happily, the Energy Ombudsman has since found in your favour and awarded you the £90 plus £60 compensation. Meanwhile, E.ON has lost another customer, and even fewer people will be prepared to sign up for one of its smart meters – all to save itself £90.
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