Beware of First Utility

chris_francis

A cautionary tale for those of you looking to save money on your gas & electricity. We used the Uswitch website to check the price of gas and electricity under the dual fuel tarriff to check against our then current supplier. Having inserted all the relevant information including the actual amount of fuel used in our last month we were pleasantly surprised to find that First Utility were offering a fantastic saving over our current supplier ( Southern Electric) - we were paying £123 a month for the dual fuel.

Believing First Utility promises we switched supplier, got a refund from Southern Electric and sat smugly thinking what we could use the savings on.

Shock, Horror, the first bill came from First Utility £253.03

Surely there must be a mistake!!!

Call to First Utility who confirmed that the figure was correct and couldnt understand how Southern Electric could provide dual fuel for so little????

Needless to say we have contacted Southern Electric and are now in the process of moving back to them.........

The moral of the story....Even if a company promises you cheaper unit prices on gas and electricity, if that company is called First Utility....RUN LIKE HELL

NJW69

I have the opposite experience. My bills before came to just under £200 (£135 for Gas and £63 for electric). I've swapped online to first:utility and my first months bill was £94 gas and £42 electricity based on actual usage so I'm happy with that as I saved over £60 in one month and will get some money back each quarter for doing my own readings and then after a year for a loyalty bonus.

Premier_2

Whilst prices do vary between supplier, for a supplier who you belived would be cheaper to actually cost you over twice as much just isn't realistic I'm afarid.

You are looking to find blame where it doesn't exist rather than investigating the root cause.

e.g. This time of year is more expensive than say a couple of months ago because you use more energy.
When you use a comparison site, it details the tariff and so you should be able to see if there really is a saving to be had.
Only inputting 1 months usage figures will cause errors/estimations to occur.
etc.

You need to get to the bottom of this else you will continue to make expensive errors. To simply suggest that one supplier is costing you over twice as much as another is not the correct conclusion.

penrhyn

A cautionary tale, if you are to get an accuartae result from a comparison site you must use your annual consumption figures in Kwh for gas and electricity.
(if you don't know how to convert gas units to Kwh Google to find out)
It is pointless just using a notional £xx per month figure.

On a lighter not, you may well think that the clue is in the company name First Utility (FU), I couldn't possibly comment:rotfl:

johnnyfavorite

I am pretty sure First:utility charge each month as incurred rather than averaging out usage over the year - so in winter high bills, in summer low bills.

More worryingly, they have a software glitch which has existed at least since last October making new customers unable to sign on to their electricity account and enter the necessary readings, and which sends emails to the customer saying that their electricity supply has not been transferred yet from their previous supplier even though it was transferred months ago. I do not know if this is a universal problem or only applying to a few accounts. I have got the call centre clerk to raise the issue with their IT centre last month and again today. Meantime, no payments for electricity so when the first bill does arrive it will be a whopper.

It looks as if they have under-resourced their IT dept like most businesses do. I hope they monitor this forum as that seems more likely to get action than messages through the call centre staff...

aelitaman

This is a classic case of a buyer not understanding what they were buying i.e switching from a smoothed monthly DD to cover 12 months of gas usaged to paying for what was actually used per month and 2) why switching sites are not very useful.

Also to the OP if you had built up enough credit over the summer then the refund that you got should have been enough to cover the payments of actual gas used in addition to the old monthly DD amount you were paying.. Seeing as you are switching back to Southern if they have left your DD the same as before but paid back all of the credit that you accumluted over the summer then you will be posting on this site Sounthern Electric Ripped me Off massive gas bill type of post. So you may want to double your DD to southern or pay the credit back to ensure you doi net get a masive bill in the spring.

Johnny Favorite - I have switched to First Utiliy and it has been very smooth I was billed for elecy and gas the next month after the switch occured and they even send me emails saying they will be using these useage figures to calculate the months bill and I have 5 days to submit actual readings on thier website and if I do (which I do) they recalculate the bill with the actual figures I submit. This is a fantastic feature.

NJW69

johnnyfavorite wrote: »

I am pretty sure First:utility charge each month as incurred rather than averaging out usage over the year - so in winter high bills, in summer low bills.

More worryingly, they have a software glitch which has existed at least since last October making new customers unable to sign on to their electricity account and enter the necessary readings, and which sends emails to the customer saying that their electricity supply has not been transferred yet from their previous supplier even though it was transferred months ago. I do not know if this is a universal problem or only applying to a few accounts. I have got the call centre clerk to raise the issue with their IT centre last month and again today. Meantime, no payments for electricity so when the first bill does arrive it will be a whopper.

It looks as if they have under-resourced their IT dept like most businesses do. I hope they monitor this forum as that seems more likely to get action than messages through the call centre staff...

I've submitted my reading online three times for both gas and electric without problem.

mikey111

I subscribed last year to First Utility i Save dual fuel package which was competitive and offered a worthwhile discount after a one year contract. 6 months later they increased the gas standing charge by 67% and Electricity standing charge by 20% as well as a sizeable increase in unit price.

They then advertised a new version of the same plan (version 5) at much much lower prices. When I asked to move to the newer version I was told I could not do so before one year without losing the accrued discount.

This is a snide scheme to lock people in at what appear to be competitive prices then raise the price to ensure that any discount is worthless and at the same time introduce a new version of the same thing at much much lower prices to snare the next batch of unsuspecting consumers.

Potential new First Utility customers.... BEWARE !!

MONEYPENNY

This company would take pole position on BBC Watchdog series as the most incompetent and poorly managed company ever to hit the UK market in any category of business if it were to be featured . They are a disgrace and should be made to cease trading as they are so bad.
I switched to these cowboys coming up to a year ago now and I am yet to receive a correct bill using the correct meter serial numbers .
I have tried everything and in fact done everything in an effort to sort it out and still they cannot give me a correct bill .
The OMBUDSMAN service is just as useless, as F.U just ignore there demands and do as they please, and they are now preventing me from switching suppliers due to their errors which I understand they are not allowed to do according to Ofgem rules brought in this year.
Take note all of you out there, say: F.U. TO FIRST UTILITY

They are conducting a big push at the moment to try and con more people to them with the promise of "smart meters" and new tariffs,
which are not even competitive against there rivals now, let alone in 3 months time when they hike them up by 50% or even more as they have done in the past to there customers astonishment .
BEWARE OF FIRST UTILITY, THIS COMPANY IS A SCAM, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED .

MONEYPENNY

Will the real Stacey Roberts please step forward, and defend your company against all this constant criticism that seems to be constantly appearing on numerous forums concerning Energy suppliers.
Better still get your boss on here to give us some high powered waffle.

junpit

Hi

I must admit my experience was terrible. I joined them in Jan 2010, got my smart meter installed. Every month I could not get a bill and they could not work out what I should be paying.

I left them in June 2010 after never receiving a bill. I did get usage for my electricty online but the gas never worked.

I moved to EDF and to my horror they told me they needed to send me back as they could not support my meter. So watch out folks if you decide to leave as you may find that most energy providers can't even handle your meter. So I have ended up at EDF (for about 3 months) and have moved to npower who dont seem to have a problem with my meter.

I just hope this all works out. The thing is that I think there's an argument for saying that my movement here has probably cost me a load of money as I kept swapping tariffs for more expensive ones.

-Darren