Add your feedback on energy supplier Flow

I usually submit my readings when requested, about the 25th. Sometimes that reading is on the statement sometimes not. There is always an estimated reading for the last day of the month, but this is so accurate that I think it must be based on the reading I submitted a few days earlier whether or not my reading is shown.

I submit an energy reading around the 26th. The last few days of the bill are usually estimated, and sometimes they don't register my gas reading, but their estimate is usually pretty good.

I usually get a bill around the 8th of the following month.

They are cheap, reasonably accurate and responsive to emails. On the whole I like them so far. Much better than Npower or Scottish power, both of which I will never return to.

The usual point at which energy companies fall down is when their fixed deal ends and I want to switch away. But that is a while off yet.

I was very excited to switch to Flow Energy given the significantl cost saving and the purportedly good feedback referred to in the Cheap Energy Club. However, after around a week on supply with them, I'm already seriously considering leaving unless they up their game soon.

It didn't start well with a welcome letter that misrecorded my name and address despite me having put that information correctly into their webform when signing up. Welcome letter aside then nothing but silence. I phoned up and was told the switchover would occur at the end of September and I'd be alerted nearer the time to give my opening readings. Again communications silence so having googled switchover process I call them 5 days prior to switchover and gave an advisor my readings. Gas reading would not take for some reason but the advisor noted it and said it would go in again on another attempt. Letters asking for meter readings finally arrived a week later and 3 days after I'd in theory come on supply with them. I sat back thinking everything was done as I'd given the readings.

I have a credit balance with the old supplier but they won't release it until they've heard from Flow with my meter readings so an accurate final bill can be compiled. Today I went back to Flow to see what was going on. I spoke to a chap who didn't explain things in a consumer friendly way and told me the problem was with the National Grid / Xoserve not having validated the meter readings and that I should wait 3 more working days as these things took about 10 working days to be validated. He said that if validation didn't occur in this period I would need to wait another 30 days before Flow would take it up with the National Grid /Xoserve. Great so my old supplier gets to hold onto the credit for potentially the next 6 weeks! I decided to phone Xoserve and spent an hour trying to find someone who could help me and finally checked my supply accounts. Guess what - no number for gas received by them at all - explains why the validation had not taken place.

Back to Flow. Spoke to another customer service executive called Helen (very good) who looked at the account properly and knows what she's doing. She explained the gas reading I gave nearly 2 weeks ago had not been put into the system at all so wasn't even in the process of being validated. Appalling!!! Had I not wasted an hour calling Xoserve I would never have know there was a problem at Flow's end that even one of their advisors didn't pick up.

Sadly, this has robbed me of my confidence in Flow and I seriously hope there are no more issues. I moved my parents to E.ON in the collective switch and the switch went through extremely quickly and without any hitches at all. Sometimes the big guys do it best.

So consider this and the feedback above about the problems in other posts with meter reading recording before you sign up.

I am in the process of moving from Eon to Flow for electricity on an Economy 7 meter.
After about 3 weeks I was emailed for a meter reading. I submitted this online as directed, but decided to follow up with a phone call and was glad I did. They had got the daytime and nighttime figures the wrong way round. They admitted there was a known bug on the system that was causing this. Not the best of starts and am awaiting the next stage in the process and then checking that end and start figures tally.
I got through on the phone fairly quickly and customer service was very good. Hopefully just an initial glitch as often seems to happen when moving suppliers. Their website seems very basic, a bit amateurish compared to the big companies, but hopefully it will be ok. I will definitely be double checking my meter readings in future to make sure they are being entered correctly and would advise anyone moving to them, if you have night and day time readings, to do so too.