Utility Warehouse???

davidjwest

Not a fan of them at all, here's my story.

Signed up for electricity, gas, telephone and broadband when I moved into a rented house in Jan 2009 - the letting agent had the paperwork when I picked up the keys and so I decided to go for it as I'd read good things about them.

First of all they couldn't get the broadband to work, so after two months of them trying and numerous phone calls I told them to forget it and I signed up to Virgin - I told them I only wanted the gas and electricity from them as they'd failed to deliver.

They blamed BT for the problems and charged me an £80 disconnection fee. I wrote to them complaining about this and pointing out they were breaching their own T&Cs by charging me but they said that I hadn't given them sufficient time and opportunity to remedy things.

After that things were fine until I moved away to another provider after I found out how expensive they were compared to for example Scottish Power.

Out of the blue I received a letter from a debt collections agency for around £90 - apparantly they'd sent me a final bill and a red letter that I'd never received. I asked them to send a copy of this bill which they did as well as a copy of a bill for some other random customer of theirs.

Finally I received another letter from the same debt collections agency for the same amount but addressed to someone with a slightly different name - admittedly this could the debt collections company's mistake.

prettyvacant77

Well I originally discovered these forums when trying to find out some information on UW only to find one gigantic thread full of nothing but bickering and insults!

For what it's worth, I'm in a similar position. I moved into a rented flat a few months ago and inherited a UW supply. Admittedly, for someone who had used a few various online tariffs before (E-On, Scottish Power), I was a little sceptical about the whole thing, even more so after I read up on some of the marketing tactics.

I figured I'd give them a fair go and switch if I found any problems. I signed up for Elec, Phone and Broadband (Broadcall) and the now legendary Cashback Card (:D).

The leccy is quite pricey but from what I've experienced so far, everything else has been fine. Customer service have been friendly enough when I had some teething troubles getting my internet connection up and running, phone has been fine, broadband has been fairly steady (if a little slow @ avg 3Mbps). Decent quality hardware supplied for the broadband, Netgear DG832G router + wireless usb adapter.

Cashback card with the 5% return has proven very useful though. Between me and my girlfriend, our combined monthly spend on food and fuel through Sainsburys is >£350. Add in the occasional purchases from Comet, Argos, Debenhams, Halfords plus more, it all adds up. Last month my bill was -£11.27 :rotfl::rotfl:

Only slight gripe with it is that the cashback doesn't always get deducted when you think it will, we didn't see any return for the first month.

Billing is fine so far, I'm getting billed for what I've actually used as long as I provide a meter reading every month.

Just my point of view as a new customer, there's a lot of noise about them, both for and against. For me the main problem with their marketing techniques is actually trying to find an honest, neutral opinion online is nigh on impossible thanks to all the noise created by (certain) ID's.

My tuppence worth, there you go

Cardew

1carminestocky wrote: »

Utilising the cashback card and buying the stuff i would normally buy on my debit card but instead paying for them on my UW cashback card, i am currently averaging a £40 discount on each monthly bill (this will rise as we get nearer Xmas and in fact my cashback this month will be £60+ reducing my monthly bill for all 4 services to approx £40!).

It is worth pointing out to achieve the £40 per month average cashback,(to achieve the payments in post #11 above) you have to spend over £10,000 per year on the card. You pay for the card, put money on the card in advance, and pay for each top up.

None the less if you have that spending pattern, in the selected shops, it is a good deal.

However someone with the ability to spend over £10,000 pa on the card would generally have average(or above) gas and electricity consumption. If you have average consumption(20,500kWh gas and 3,300kWh electricity) you will pay £919 pa with the cheapest tariff in my area(midlands). With UW you would pay £1199 pa. That is £280 more or 30.5% extra

If you do find the UW cashback card attractive, then you can get the card even if you have just one service - say take Phone, or Broadband, or both.
As said earlier, their Broadband/phone package is reasonably competitive, but by no means the cheapest. It seems crazy to pay £hundreds extra for your gas and electricity, when you can get the benefits of the cashback card(if you want it) with another service.

1carminestocky

prettyvacant77 wrote: »

Well I originally discovered these forums when trying to find out some information on UW only to find one gigantic thread full of nothing but bickering and insults!

For what it's worth, I'm in a similar position. I moved into a rented flat a few months ago and inherited a UW supply. Admittedly, for someone who had used a few various online tariffs before (E-On, Scottish Power), I was a little sceptical about the whole thing, even more so after I read up on some of the marketing tactics.

I figured I'd give them a fair go and switch if I found any problems. I signed up for Elec, Phone and Broadband (Broadcall) and the now legendary Cashback Card (:D).

The leccy is quite pricey but from what I've experienced so far, everything else has been fine. Customer service have been friendly enough when I had some teething troubles getting my internet connection up and running, phone has been fine, broadband has been fairly steady (if a little slow @ avg 3Mbps). Decent quality hardware supplied for the broadband, Netgear DG832G router + wireless usb adapter.

Cashback card with the 5% return has proven very useful though. Between me and my girlfriend, our combined monthly spend on food and fuel through Sainsburys is >£350. Add in the occasional purchases from Comet, Argos, Debenhams, Halfords plus more, it all adds up. Last month my bill was -£11.27 :rotfl::rotfl:

Only slight gripe with it is that the cashback doesn't always get deducted when you think it will, we didn't see any return for the first month.

Billing is fine so far, I'm getting billed for what I've actually used as long as I provide a meter reading every month.

Just my point of view as a new customer, there's a lot of noise about them, both for and against. For me the main problem with their marketing techniques is actually trying to find an honest, neutral opinion online is nigh on impossible thanks to all the noise created by (certain) ID's.

My tuppence worth, there you go

Nice one. When you read this, it sort of backs up my theory that, whilst UW is by no means the solution for everyone, for the people who fit the spending criteria on the cashback card it can be an absolute no-brainer. The amount of effort some go to on here to save a few bob (we had one poster in this thread who admitted to using FIVE different phone/access providers to get the best deal on his calls :eek:), then loading money from your current account/debit card onto the UW card (can be done automatically, BTW) in order to get 5% of your spend knocked off your UW bill is hardly very taxing.

PS I take the point raised by Cardew that my cashback equates to £10,000 annual spend but as we do our main shop at Sainsburys and fill up the 3 cars in our household at Sainsburys, it doesn't take a genius to work out that the majority of this £10,000 annual outlay is spent with one retailer. Food/grocery/fuel shopping must be the average family's largest monthly outlay (unless they have a large mortgage). To not get *some* financial benefit from this large outlay is not very moneysaving.