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Olivia Buck
August 7th, 2008
5 Comments »

"Look into my eyes... You will forget everything..."E.ON Memory Thief was at it again

Thursday 7th August, 2008 - £8,228.83 in debt…

You know how sometimes you feel like the whole world is out to confuse you and drive you up the wall? Well, I think I might have been a bit conned by E.ON or uSwitch or both. Either that or I’ve lost my mind.

The story so far:

On Tuesday of last week, I switched to a capped energy tariff - specifically E.ON’s Energy Saver Version 4 Dual Fuel (catchy name, isn’t it?). I switched using uSwitch (because I’m familiar with it and the adverts shouted at me), and I SWEAR it told me that there was no cancellation fee if I decided to switch away from E.ON.

I even made a note of it in my blog post that day! See!

Today I received my confirmation letter from E.ON, which nicely sets out all the details of my new account with them - the tariff, the day the capped prices will end, the discounts I get, the gas and electricity prices per kilowatt hour, blah blah blah. And the £35 cancellation fee that E.ON “may charge” if I switch away from them or stop paying by direct debit.

I don’t think I blame E.ON - my last blog post on the matter even linked to a webpage that mentioned the cancellation fee, but I obviously didn’t see it! Unless they’ve since changed the wording… Or someone from E.ON came round and temporarily blinded me last Tuesday and then wiped my memory…

So I’m inclined to think that the information on uSwitch was wrong, but the tariff isn’t available to new customers any more so it’s no longer on uSwitch and I can’t check it.

Hang on… it was the first tariff on the list that didn’t mention a cancellation fee, and that’s why I chose it! It’s all coming back to me now (as Meatloaf once said) - I would have chosen a cheaper one if it wasn’t for that. Although the Tesco Clubcard points could have had something to do with it as well.

In the great scheme of things, a cancellation charge I might never have to pay is not a huge deal. But I do resent being given false information by the switching service I used. That’s as long as that’s really what happened - the more I think about it, the more confused I become.

Has this happened to anyone else? Can anyone reassure me that I’m not going completely insane?

In other news…

Speaking of confusion, I took advantage of Orange Wednesdays yesterday and saw The Dark Knight. Didn’t understand most of it, but it was two-and-a-half hours of “moderate violence and sustained threat” and the Joker will now appear in my nightmares for at least a month. Not bad for £3.45.




Olivia Buck
July 14th, 2008
2 Comments »

you want coffee? make it yourself An especially surly young man

Monday 14th July, 2008 - £8,850.98 in debt…

This weekend saw my first trip to Nottingham for bridesmaid duties, and I spent £52.80. Not too bad, especially since I’ve only spent about a fiver on day-to-day things over the last couple of weeks, and I can now severely restrict my spending for the next few days as well.

But why spend over £50 on one weekend? Well, apparently this is what happens when you don’t tell your friends you’re on a budget.

I didn’t want to spend the whole time moaning that I’ve got no money, so I ended up doing completely unnecessary things – spending £9.50 (including tip) on lunch, using a service station cash machine that charges £2 to give me my own flipping money, buying takeout coffees from a surly young man…

Luckily, I felt horribly, horribly bad about doing all of those things and I won’t be doing them again in a hurry. I especially won’t be seeing any superhero-themed Will Smith films at the cinema without the aid of Orange Wednesdays.