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Good grief! Does it never end? If it’s not the banks playing craps with sub-prime mortgage lending, rigging LIBOR rates, or picking the pockets of loyal customers with unnecessary fees, then it’s the financial traders running amok throwing customers’ money to the wind like rice at a wedding. If not them, it’s utility companies tacking on extra charges as E·ON (DE:EONGn) has admitted doing.
Shares of E·ON, the world’s largest investor-owned utility service company, had dipped only €0.01 by 1:00 pm GMT today, resting at €13.88 despite the company’s announcement that it would be repaying £1.4 million to 94,000 UK customers it had admitted to overcharging when exiting the firms services. E·ON will also be ‘donating’ an additional £300,000 to a fund operated by Age UK. The £300,000 brings the total E·ON payout to £1.7 million, and will be used to assist elderly UK citizens.
Under OFGEM (Office of Gas and Electricity Markets) regulations, customers who give their utility company 30 day’s notice before discontinuing service are not responsible for disconnection fees. In E·ON’s case, those customers had been charged the fees from 2008 through 2001.
In typical corporate spinning and side-stepping, aka tap dancing, E·ON blamed ‘a computer error’ for the charges. Now, wait just one minute! A computer error? What does that euphemism mean? Are we so tech-oriented that we have we forgotten GIGO? You remember GIGO don’t you? Garbage In – Garbage Out.
It is NOT a ‘computer error’! It is either incompetence in the IT department or it is planned programming. Do they really think we are that ignorant? Or are we really that ignorant? Shame on both E·ON and OFGEM for not getting to the real root of the problem!
Yes, shame on OFGEM too! It is ludicrous to believe that a company could trot out their programming maps and simply say “Oops. There’s the problem. It’s a computer error. Case closed. Thanks for helping us find it.” OFGEM: “Sorry to have bothered you.”
It’s not a computer error. It is either a programming error or it is intentional programming. Either way, wasn’t anyone reading the P&L’s, the financial statements, the operating reports? Would you have us to believe that highly-compensated executives could not see that the monies going to the exit line item did not jive with the number of customers exiting? No one? No one? Not even the auditors?
There is someone, incompetent or devious, behind this. Why is OFGEM not holding anyone accountable? Paying back the money is the least they should do. It sure makes the £300,000 gift to the elderly look more like a kiss on the check than a slap on the wrist. You have got to wonder who is in whose pocket.
David Bird, E·On’s Customer Service Director, said: “We are very sorry to have let down some of our former customers and have made clear that we will refund the money plus interest. Our systems are being updated to ensure this mistake can never happen again.”
He went on to say, “We’ve been open in our failure with the energy regulator, Ofgem, and are pleased to have agreed with them how we can put this right and have identified all customers who are due to receive payment from us in January.”
So, back to business as usual. Or, as they say at the utility company, “That wasn’t so bad. It didn’t cost us that much and they didn’t see the other stuff.”
