Bulb - Referral Fees?

It would seem that Bulb's £50 existing customer referral fee has generated a number of websites purporting to be Bulb. I confess that I am not keen on paying a third-party's energy bill but I would think about switching to Bulb if I was confident that the referral fee would go to a registered UK Charity. I have tried chatting to Bulb but online chat keeps dropping out. I know that Bulb has a favoured charity, and has a referral link. Does the new customer also get a further £50 that I could give to a charity of my choice?
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  • pooch
    pooch Posts: 828 Forumite
    edited 13 July 2017 at 11:56AM
    Hengus wrote: »
    It would seem that Bulb's £50 existing customer referral fee has generated a number of websites purporting to be Bulb. I confess that I am not keen on paying a third-party's energy bill but I would think about switching to Bulb if I was confident that the referral fee would go to a registered UK Charity. I have tried chatting to Bulb but online chat keeps dropping out. I know that Bulb has a favoured charity, and has a referral link. Does the new customer also get a further £50 that I could give to a charity of my choice?

    Yes I believe Bulb are paying the referrer for enticing people to switch to them

    There's another infamous supplier that pays customers to refer more [STRIKE]mugs[/STRIKE] customers to them as well, isn't there , but I know we can't mention them here!

    I guess it's the only way some people can afford the exhorbitant prices those suppliers charge - these payments have to be funded somehow, and that must be via the paying customers.

    As bulb say
    Do this with enough friends and you'll never have to pay for energy again!
    But be warned, you may not have many friends soon either, if you con them into this malarkey.

    It's up to the recipient of such money to pass it onto a charity if that is what they want. If you wish to pass your [STRIKE]bribe[/STRIKE] cashback onto charity, consider using gift aid so that the charity gets even more :)
  • System
    System Posts: 178,077
    Photogenic Name Dropper First Post
    Community Admin
    Fair enough but some suppliers are also paying the same fee to PCWs.
  • pooch
    pooch Posts: 828 Forumite
    Hengus wrote: »
    Fair enough but some suppliers are also paying the same fee to PCWs.

    Which supplier pays £100 to any PCW? :huh:

    Also, people consult PCWs usually to find the lowest price deal.

    When your so called "friend" tells you what a "wonderful" deal they can get you, you probably will sign up without double checking the veracity of that claim... only to discover the fallacy when the bill arrives. :(
  • System
    System Posts: 178,077
    Photogenic Name Dropper First Post
    Community Admin
    pooch wrote: »
    Which supplier pays £100 to any PCW? :huh:

    Also, people consult PCWs usually to find the lowest price deal.

    When your so called "friend" tells you what a "wonderful" deal they can get you, you probably will sign up without double checking the veracity of that claim... only to discover the fallacy when the bill arrives. :(

    All I was asking in my original post was whether I could use the supplier’s referral code ( not a code from an existing Bulb customer) so that £50 would go a charity of the supplier’s choice and whether I would also get £50 to donate to a charity of my choice. As it so happens, Bulb is pretty competitive at the moment so if it, say, cost me an extra £20 a year in energy costs to donate £50 to Cancer Research or The British Heart Foundation (with the bonus of the charity claiming back tax) then I personally would see this as a good deal for me and the charities involved. Bulb has already offered me a £50 referral code: the piece of the jigsaw that is missing is whether I would also have £50 added to my account if I switched?
  • Will_at_Bulb
    Will_at_Bulb Posts: 60 Organisation Representative
    Hi Hengus,

    With any referral code, both the referrer and the recruit get £50 credit added to each of their Bulb accounts on the day that the switch completes. So in this scenario, you would get £50 credit. We'd be very happy to refund this immediately so you can donate however you'd like.

    The referrer can do whatever they like with their credit too. Several have made promises to donate their £50 to charity, so you should be able to find someone to match your donation. Try searching Twitter or the Bulb community.
    Official Company Representative
    I am an official company representative of Bulb. MSE has given permission for me to post in response to queries about the company, so that I can help solve issues. You can see my name on the companies with permission to post list. I am not allowed to tout for business at all. If you believe I am please report it to forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com This does NOT imply any form of approval of my company or its products by MSE
  • System
    System Posts: 178,077
    Photogenic Name Dropper First Post
    Community Admin
    Hi Hengus,

    With any referral code, both the referrer and the recruit get £50 credit added to each of their Bulb accounts on the day that the switch completes. So in this scenario, you would get £50 credit. We'd be very happy to refund this immediately so you can donate however you'd like.

    The referrer can do whatever they like with their credit too. Several have made promises to donate their £50 to charity, so you should be able to find someone to match your donation. Try searching Twitter or the Bulb community.

    Thanks Will. When I chatted online yesterday, I was offered a referral code for the charity that Bulb supports. I didn’t get an answer regarding the other £50. I don’t want to be rude but as Watchdog broadcast yesterday, there are people around that set up web pages etc suggesting that money will go to a charity when it just ends up in their pockets.

    I emailed your CS about this yesterday.
  • Will_at_Bulb
    Will_at_Bulb Posts: 60 Organisation Representative
    edited 14 July 2017 at 11:40AM
    Ah, sorry I think I've misunderstood your question and the link that you're referring to. We have referral links, which relate to a Bulb customer, and these give £50 to both the referrer and the recruit. We also have affiliate links that various companies and charities have set up with us.

    Any link that has "refer" in it is a referral link. It will be in the form of "bulb. co. uk/ refer/ uniquename". If it doesn't then it's an affiliate link with it's own reward structure which is usually just £50 to the charity. We try to make it very clear on the page what the rewards for that link are, so if a specific link is confusing we'll tweak it to make it clearer.

    If you let us know what the exact link you're using is then I confirm the rewards for you. I'll reply to your CS email, so let me know there.
    Official Company Representative
    I am an official company representative of Bulb. MSE has given permission for me to post in response to queries about the company, so that I can help solve issues. You can see my name on the companies with permission to post list. I am not allowed to tout for business at all. If you believe I am please report it to forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com This does NOT imply any form of approval of my company or its products by MSE
  • System
    System Posts: 178,077
    Photogenic Name Dropper First Post
    Community Admin
    OK Will. Thanks for the confirmation.
  • MK__2
    MK__2 Posts: 23 Forumite
    Something I noticed on the review sites is that Bulb seemed to have fantastic average reviews ratings (e.g. 9.7/10 on Trustpilot).
    BUT when you read them, 99% of the reviews are just people effectively advertising for the £50 referrals - they all end their review with "here's my referral code (just remove the brackets wink wink) so we can both get £50.." There was hardly any reviews at all relating to customer service or anything else.

    I wonder whether it's all just a ruse to boost their customer ratings before they hike the price up (they only offer a variable rate deal)
  • Will_at_Bulb
    Will_at_Bulb Posts: 60 Organisation Representative
    MK_ wrote: »
    Something I noticed on the review sites is that Bulb seemed to have fantastic average reviews ratings (e.g. 9.7/10 on Trustpilot).
    BUT when you read them, 99% of the reviews are just people effectively advertising for the £50 referrals - they all end their review with "here's my referral code (just remove the brackets wink wink) so we can both get £50.." There was hardly any reviews at all relating to customer service or anything else.

    I wonder whether it's all just a ruse to boost their customer ratings before they hike the price up (they only offer a variable rate deal)


    A lot of members like to share their links on Trustpilot. If members like us enough to proactively share their link then that's fine by us. We don't actively encourage or ask members to share their link on Trustpilot though. We send out invitations about once a month or so to a random selection of members, and they tend to not share their referral link. The last set was on the 27th June, so if you take a look at reviews from that period you should see what you're looking for. Either way, all our reviews are genuine expressions by our members. Members like sharing their referral links is all.

    We have no plans to raise our prices either. In fact we've lowered them twice this year. And only having a single variable tariff pretty much guarantees that we won't increase our prices unfairly. We use our variable tariff for bringing new people over to Bulb, so if we did unfairly jack up prices we would instantly also completely kill off our growth. Which would be completely counter productive. Plus existing members aren't tied into contracts, so they'd leave us too. Instead, we keep our prices as low as we can for all our members. Much more fair that way.
    Official Company Representative
    I am an official company representative of Bulb. MSE has given permission for me to post in response to queries about the company, so that I can help solve issues. You can see my name on the companies with permission to post list. I am not allowed to tout for business at all. If you believe I am please report it to forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com This does NOT imply any form of approval of my company or its products by MSE
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