I’ve been struggling for 21 months to get functioning solar panels and a battery installed by E.ON. I paid the £3,000 deposit in March 2022. After the initial survey in April, it disappeared without giving me an installation date. In November, it finally installed the scaffolding, damaging my satellite dish in the process, then failed to show up for the installation appointment. A second appointment was missed because E.ON sent the parts to the wrong warehouse.
The panels and the battery were finally fitted, poorly, last December, but, because of missing parts, the system could not be commissioned and therefore exported electricity to the grid for free. This took a further two months to resolve.
The battery stopped working within four months and, so far, E.ON has failed to fix it. We have therefore lost more than £400 because we’re unable to store electricity. I have never once been able to speak a manager, despite impressing on them that, in the midst of this, I was diagnosed with stage four cancer and enduring the most difficult time in my life.
PP, Cambourne
This is the sort of service you’d expect from one of the many fly-by-night outfits that jumped on the eco-energy bandwagon.
A shortage of solar installers across the UK and Europe is hampering green energy targets. I asked E.ON if it was having trouble recruiting contractors. “Yes” is presumably the answer, since E.ON admitted it had struggled to meet a “huge surge” in orders last year. It says: “We’ve spoken to the customer to apologise for any failings in our service and agreed a significant goodwill payment for the inconvenience.”
Any failings! There is not, to my knowledge, a national shortage of customer service agents, so it’s a disgrace that you were not kept informed. You are now up and running. The £1,200 goodwill payment is not as generous as it looks for it includes the £150 you had to pay to repair the damaged satellite dish, and the energy and revenue lost out on while the system failed to work.
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