Utility Warehouse (Telecom Plus) Discussion

MillicentBystander

The vast majority of the services UW offer are offered on a no min contract basis as standard (including broadband, which is very very rare in the industry without charging a premium). Meaning UW punters are free to leave at any time penalty free. Yet their churn rates (they always publish them unlike many companies in ther sector) are excellent and customer numbers have grown so much that Telecom Plus (the holding company) is now a gnat's (approx £25 million) off being a billion pound company with no acquisitions of rival companies etc. and virtually no bank borrowing.

They are clearly doing summat right lol.

Indeed, Ofgem more or less copied the way UW have been doing G&E since 2005 in their recent market review. Result? Every other energy supplier will now have to do more or less what UW have been doing for the last 8 years. And the playing field will be more level for all customers of these other companies (especially the Big 6, ironically who most of the anti-UW posters are with). It's all a bit ironic, isn't it?

Meeper

Someone doesn't need to use the word to imply the meaning. Let's not get caught up in semantics.

MillicentBystander

Returning to the MSE poll that kicked off this latest spate of to'ing and fro'ing, I note Ebico have 130 votes currently compared to UW's 698. Only problem being it would appear Ebico have approx 50,000 customers and UW 400,000+. 8 x 130 = 1040 votes. Perhaps there should be an editorial note under Ebico's vote (Like UW, Ebico also offer financial rewards for customer recommendations)?

Meeper

UW are a couple of hundred away from 500,000 now, for the record.

MillicentBystander

Meeper wrote: »

UW are a couple of hundred away from 500,000 now, for the record.

Total customers I know but i was limiting it to G&E customers based on their March 2013 figures and obviously being conservative for fear of the nitpickers

Electricity 403,922
Gas 334,565

I believe the Big 6 would state this as 738,000 'customers' BTW

wongawonga

I assume we can expect a price increase from them sooner or later given that N Power there supplier have upped prices.

MillicentBystander

wongawonga wrote: »

I assume we can expect a price increase from them sooner or later given that N Power there supplier have upped prices.

it looks like they actually delayed their last increase until after the Winter was over but I have my doubts as to if they can repeat that feat this time round.

A very informative site


http://www.ukpower.co.uk/home_energy/price_updates

droberts1988

I applied to be a "gold status" customer 4 weeks ago, after my friend (who is a distributor) got all evangelical about them and said that I would save money. After 4 weeks my phone line and broadband isn't working and yet with no engineer date in sight ("we haven't heard back from BT Openzone yet try again in 2 days" which they have said in the past week) I am moving to sky and EDF.To me they don't seem that much cheaper, their price promise is only against British gas for gas, and the local supplier for electric, and even then that doesn't take duel fuel into account. When I was with sky I felt that when they had problems with BT Openzone at least they would chase them for me and keep me updated, whereas with UW it feels like unless you are a distributor as well (with their special VIP number for customer queries) that they couldn't give a s***. Also what respectable company now has "customer services" only open from 9-530? That's when most people are at work! Compare this to sky which are open 24/7.

NigeWick

droberts1988 wrote: »

I am moving to sky and EDF.

I'm with Sky (negotiated a good deal this summer) for TV, phone line & broadband and have a long EDF fix. Still got two mobiles with Utility Warehouse and they often pay me for the services as we use the pre payment card to good effect.

penrhyn

I'm always suspicious of first time posters who come on to praise or criticise companies, must be getting cynical in my old age.

#hiddenagenda