Utility Warehouse - any good?

llywelyn111

phil140701 wrote: »

I'm with UW and have been since august, i live in a 1 bed room flat, with wife and 2 dogs, i have taken out elec, gas and broadcall laptop my monthly bills are on average £75. with that split down is approx £16 a month for gas, approx £12 a month for electric and the broadcall laptop package(warranty on the laptop until i/if i decide to cancel my package after 2 yr contract) is on average £40, i pay around £2 a month for silver membership which gives me free calls to their customer services and broadband support numbers and also a free life insurance policy.
I'm not a distributor, i have not got any friends or family to join up nor do i work for them in any other capacity, but from my experience, their customer services are excellent, always polite and all my problems have been fully resolved with one call, their bills are cheaper than any other company i have been with.

phil

thanks for letting me know Phil. I'm giving them a ring tomorrow to sort out switching.

1carminestocky

phil140701 wrote: »

I'm with UW and have been since august, i live in a 1 bed room flat, with wife and 2 dogs, i have taken out elec, gas and broadcall laptop my monthly bills are on average £75. with that split down is approx £16 a month for gas, approx £12 a month for electric and the broadcall laptop package(warranty on the laptop until i/if i decide to cancel my package after 2 yr contract) is on average £40, i pay around £2 a month for silver membership which gives me free calls to their customer services and broadband support numbers and also a free life insurance policy.
I'm not a distributor, i have not got any friends or family to join up nor do i work for them in any other capacity, but from my experience, their customer services are excellent, always polite and all my problems have been fully resolved with one call, their bills are cheaper than any other company i have been with.

phil

Thanks for that. It looks like UW have discontinued the Broadcall laptop package, I really hope they bring it back as it would be something I would be interested in if I sign up for UW if/when I ever get fed up with/if the energy companies stop from me from doing my cashback switching. I do think the more services you take the more competitive the package. Which, to be fair to them, most of the UW distributors on here tend to say also.


PS What's the laptop like? I believe it's a Fujitsu Siemens?

phil140701

the laptop is a fujitsu siemens esprimo mobile v5535 with 1gb ram, vista home basic, 160gb hard drive, wireless built in, dvd/cd re writer combi, 2.26ghz intel celeron processor, 15.4" widescreen, ethernet port, 3 usb sockets, pcmcia socket, vga out and a free netgear wireless g router.
they don't send out a restoration cd with it but if you phone and ask for one they will send it out to you. it comes pre-installed with open office, zattoo (a free to view/stream tv service) and a few other programs.
Phil

phil140701

i've also just took these 2 statements from their website

Worried about your energy bills? Had enough of changing suppliers every few months? Looking for guaranteed long term value?
Our unique "Triple Value" guarantee will give you peace of mind.

• For your gas, we guarantee our prices will always be lower than British Gas, wherever you live in the UK.
• For your electricity, we guarantee our prices will always be cheaper than the prices charged by your regional electricity supplier for the area where you live.
• And for your complete peace of mind, we guarantee our prices will always remain competitive compared with the cheapest tariffs available from the "Big 6" suppliers*

and:

Save £££s on call charges and line rental compared to BT's best prices, plus "FREE GLOBAL CALLS"

BT
Home Phone
You save

Monthly Line rental

£12.97
£8.99
£3.98

Local / National

3.18p
2.45p
23%

75 minute call

52.11p
3.45p
93%

30 minute call to USA / Europe with saver option

93.96p
29.4p
64.56p

Max duration for "free" or "fixed price" calls

60 mins
75 mins
£££

please note that table is only valid if you take out 4 services

Quentin

phil140701 wrote: »

Worried about your energy bills? Had enough of changing suppliers every few months? Looking for guaranteed long term value?
Our unique "Triple Value" guarantee will give you peace of mind.

By quoting the meaningless and worthless "guarantee" without the small print that accompanies it you sound like one of their reps!

The guarantee doesn't mean anything:-

It doesn't include the club membership fee

It doesn't include any dual fuel discounts on offer from other companies

It doesn't include the cheaper on-line or dual fuel tariffs from the other companies.

It doesn't "guarantee" anything other than to be "competitive", and they don't say what they mean by this.

And it doesn't offer customers any way of claiming against them should the so called guarantee fail.

Quentin

llywelyn111 wrote: »

thanks for letting me know Phil. I'm giving them a ring tomorrow to sort out switching.

If you want to switch to them, ringing them up will mean you losing out on the cashback you would get if you used a cashback switching site.

(And calls to them are via an expensive 0844 number!)

1carminestocky

This thread has taken a turn, hasn't it? We have had a poster who's been on MSE for yonks and AFAIA never posted on this thread stating they are a customer and speaking of the company, its prices and its customer service in a very positive light (of course, arch UW obsessive compulsive Quentin still can't quite help himself and suggests they must be a rep, lol) and we have another poster who is definitely thinking about joining as UW come top of every switching site they have tried for their circumstances.

Not forgetting Hugh Jeego/Cardew actually having to admit (must have physically hurt him, this):

To be fair, as I said earlier, their economy 7 rates per kWh are competitive.

:eek:

This is the same poster who is forever banging on about UW being very uncompetitive (whilst also often stating he isn't interested enough in the company to look into the details, lol).

Bloody facinating thread, this (especially if you are studying psychiatry)

NigeWick

1carminestocky wrote: »

Looks to me like the broadcall laptop offering has been discontinued, any idea if it will return?

It was discontinued because it has stopped being profitable for the company. I presume it was caused by the pound falling against the currency of the country they bought them from. I doubt it will come back unless they can make money from it.

The mobile is on an old deal and gets free calls to "family" UW club numbers included and I just showed the ones SWMBO uses to non UW numbers.

NigeWick

Cardew wrote: »

What are your annual figures for gas electricity? or are you saying those figures x 12?

I expect the average over a year would be a bit less per month, but I'm happy to just multiply by twelve.

Cardew

NigeWick wrote: »

As 1Carminestocky is has published his usage, I'll do the same. I live in the East Midlands region.

£1.75 per month membership fee. Paper bill.
Electricity 195 kWh day time and 97 kWh night time per month
Gas 472kWh per month
Landline for home (with free geographical calls as I have four services)
Landline & 24 meg broadband package. LLU with a 40Gig limit (never been charged for using extra)
Mobile phone used for about 10 short calls and 10 texts per month.
"Cashback" card that is paying £12.59 per month towards utilities

Most unusual to gave gas and only use 25% of the UK average AND Economy 7.

Well on Gas you pay 18.7% more than you would with Ebico.

On Economy 7 I have already said UW are quite competitive so on your Electricity you 'only' pay about 36% more than BG Web Saver.

I have used the figures from Energyhelpline. When I did the comparison manually I made UW even less competitive. i.e. I made the UW costs higher.

I have already shown above that the BT phone/internet package is far better than UW for roughly the same price.
The 24meg is acedemic as you can only get what your line allows, and most people can't approach 8meg. (UK average is about 3meg)
True my package is only 15Gb if I wanted Unlimited it would cost another £5 but 15Gb is ample for most people I suspect and it you exceedeed that on the odd month the charges are not high - I have never been charged.

Other people can comment better than I on mobile/phone/internet but from the posts on the telecoms section on MSE they don't rate UW either.