Eon

Eon is owned by German company Eon SE. It's one of the UK’s largest electricity generators and owns power stations, wind farms and biomass plants.

It's also one of the largest energy suppliers in Great Britain, providing energy to around 3.8 million homes and businesses, although it lost 500,000 customers in 2019. Its customer numbers may be set to increase again though as Eon now owns the majority of Innogy, Npower's parent company.

Eon says it aims to lead the global shift towards new technology and be more sustainable. It sells solar panels and home batteries, and it is installing electric vehicle charging points across the country.

See whether Eon will save you money on energy – use Which? Switch to compare gas and electricity prices.

Eon customer score

Eon came joint-22nd out of the 25 energy companies rated by 7,460 members of the public in the annual Which? customer survey. It ranks jointly with SSE this year, behind British Gas and EDF Energy but ahead of Scottish Power and Npower.

It’s still far behind fast-growing rival Ovo Energy, showing there’s plenty of room for improvement.

Eon score breakdown

The graphic below shows the breakdown of its score from our latest survey.

Scroll down to find out how long it took to answer the phone to its customers in our snapshot investigation, if live chat is faster and our full verdict on Eon.

Find out how Eon compares with other energy companies – head to the full results of the best and worst energy companies.

Which? verdict on Eon

Eon scored a good four stars out of five for bill accuracy and a respectable three stars out of five in three other categories in our survey. That’s not bad, but customers of the highest-scoring brands achieved four stars or more. 

Eon is jointly ranked with SSE, which scored the same for bill clarity, customer service and complaints handling but worse for bill accuracy, where it was rated three stars. Eon was also rated slightly higher for value for money – its customers gave it two stars versus SSE's one.

Data from energy regulator Ofgem reveals that while Eon had a slightly above average number of complaints per 1,000 customers in the first half of 2020 compared with other firms, it solved the majority of those complaints within eight weeks.

Its tariff range includes an online-only tariff with 25% off boiler cover and one exclusively for electric and hybrid vehicle owners, which gives customers a £30 reward equivalent to 850 miles of electricity after you've had the tariff for six months.

We found that Eon took 19 minutes 40 seconds, on average, to answer the phone to its customers in our snapshot investigation into energy call waiting times.

This makes it the sixth slowest out of 31 firms we called. The median average wait time was just under six minutes.

Eon offers live chat on its website, and our investigation found it was much faster to get a response in this way, averaging 6 minutes 48 seconds. But live chat wasn't available three of the 12 times we tried, and 12 other firms offering live chat were quicker; the fastest, Outfox the Market, averaged just 10 seconds to respond.

Pros: Offers competitive fixed tariffs sometimes; rewards electric vehicle drivers

Cons: Slow to answer the phone to its customers; live chat sometimes wasn’t available in our investigation

Eon electricity sources

Eon in the news

Eon in 2020

November: Eon said it plans to cut almost 700 jobs, mainly in support and management, over two years as Npower customer are migrated over to the new Eon Next platform after it took over Npower's parent company.

March: Eon's results revealed it lost 500,000 customers in 2019 as more households switched away from the traditional big firms.

Eon in 2019

September: Eon got the go-ahead from the European Commission to take over Innogy, Npower’s parent company. Eon said it plans to integrate the two ‘swiftly’ and ‘create a company fully dedicated to putting customers at the centre’. But the two remained separate companies for the moment. 

July: Eon announced that all of its 3.3 million domestic customers would be provided with 100% renewable electricity at no extra cost. 

It owns onshore and offshore wind farms, and biomass plants, which will supply some of the renewable electricity. The rest will come from contracts with independent generators or be certified by renewable electricity guarantee certificates. These show that an equivalent amount of renewable electricity was generated to the amount supplied. 

February: Eon was the first energy firm to announce that it would raise prices when the level of the price cap on standard and default tariffs is increased on 1 April. 

Around 1.8 million customers were affected by the 10% price increase, adding £117 per year to the bills of customers who use a medium amount of gas and electricity. 

Customers with prepayment meters saw £106 (9%) added to their bills per year.

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