E.on fined ‘for being bastards’

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E.on will pay out a record £12m penalty after being found guilty of ‘being bastards’ by industry regulator Ofgem. The verdict was initially something complicated about mis-selling and rule breaches, but has been amended to the more straightforward ‘bastards’ charge after many people were left unclear as to exactly what the energy giant had done wrong.

“Soon after announcing the record fine we held a press conference because we knew that there would be a lot of questions from the media.” said Sarah Harrison, senior partner in charge of enforcement at Ofgem, “We explained in detail exactly what the rule breaches were on both telephone and doorstep selling, and why the penalty was so high, but the silence in the room suggested that the assembled journalists had no idea what we were talking about.”

“The only question we had was from a reporter for the Daily Mail who asked us to repeat the statement again, very slowly, while he wrote it down word for word. With a crayon. It was at this point that we decided that the ‘mis-selling’ charge needed simplifying and came up with the much simpler ‘being bastards’ verdict instead.”

The main point for customers to note is that they will receive a refund of approximately £35 from E.on. Those who were even interested in why they were being given money responded with blank looks when the mis-selling activities were explained to them, whereas those who were given the ‘bastards’ explanation nodded knowingly and replied “Ah, bastards. I see.”.

“We have apologised to all customers that have been impacted by this and will be completely overhauling our practices. There is no excuse for what has happened.” said Tony Cocker, chief executive of E.on UK, “On a completely unrelated note we are also announcing a price increase which we are unfortunately having to implement due to a large increase in ‘unforeseen costs’.”