Sunday 16 January 2022
30,000 packs of socks
Eon messes it up with British customers
A pair of socks in the mail and a tip to turn down the heating – Eon customers in the UK don’t find that funny given the energy crisis. They vent their anger on social media. The company apologizes. Eon isn’t the only utility making a fool of itself.
It was apparently intended as a funny suggestion by British utility Eon Next that customers could reduce their carbon footprint by turning down the heating. Only with them did the joke not go down well in the middle of winter and in view of the high energy costs.
For the polyester socks that the British subsidiary of the German energy giant sent by post to its around 30,000 customers, the supplier quickly received countless angry comments on social media. One customer vented his anger that it was a “pathetic package” in view of skyrocketing heating costs. “I don’t want your cheap nasty free socks, I want cheaper utility bills please,” wrote another user. The company then apologized.
“In light of the serious challenges many people are facing right now, this broadcast should have been stopped, we’re sorry,” Eon Next said on Twitter. The socks were “in no way intended to distract from the seriousness of the current energy crisis,” the Guardian quoted a company spokesman as saying. Households took part in an “energy-saving campaign” last year. The aim was to encourage people “in a playful way” to think about reducing their carbon footprint.
The timing for the campaign couldn’t have been worse, though. With high gas bills and food shortages, Brits are experiencing an expensive and difficult winter. Millions will feel the energy crisis in their wallets. According to Bank of America, British consumers will pay an average of $1,075 more for heating and electricity this year. Months ago, the British newspaper “Daily Mail” headlined that this was a “winter of suffering”.
In view of the acute situation, the opposition Labor Party called on Prime Minister Boris Johnson early last week to levy a special tax on companies that extract oil and gas from the North Sea. According to their calculations, the tax could cut an average energy bill by about 200 pounds, the equivalent of $272.
Tact and sensitivity seem to be in short supply among British suppliers at the moment. Eon Next’s apology is the second from a utility in a week. Before Eon, competitor Ovo Energy wrote in a letter to customers asking them to snuggle or jump with a pet to keep warm.
Alternatively, the group also recommended its customers a “hearty bowl of oatmeal” or a “hula hoop competition”. In a BBC interview last week, Ovo-Energy boss Stephen Fitzpatrick apologized for the faux pas: “It’s really annoying and embarrassing … to apologize for something that we really should never have written.”