Utility Warehouse (Telecom Plus) Discussion

Quentin

That's a shame - apart from them not being anywhere near the cheapest, not paying by dd is penalised. (You'd have thought the "service minded" rep who signed up your acquaintance would have pointed that out)

They surcharge anyone who doesn't pay by dd - 10% on top of the whole bill which includes the monthly "club" membership fee!

ThrobsBlackHat

Maz wrote: »

And don't give me all that crap about ASA adjudications etc, the big 6 have fallen foul of them many, many times so don't make us out to be the only perpetrators!

Can you give examples?

1carminestocky

ThrobsBlackHat wrote: »

Can you give examples?

You are having a laugh......aren't you? Here's a really good site to put in your favourites folder:


www.google.com

ThrobsBlackHat

Lighteater wrote: »

I suspect that a lot of the fire on this thread is down to folks feeling threatened by a clearly successful business model that is picking up around 10,000 new customers a month now - who, let's face it, can't all be stupid!

PS For any other distributors contributing here, my advice to you, for what it's worth, is don't bother. Why waste your energy when you could be out there building your business? And with that, I'm off...

10,000 signed up, and how many lost?

Of course you recommend "building your business" rather than answering genuine questions about how you are not actually that competitive at all.

UW survives on people's ignorance and an army of people making a quick buck flogging overpriced utilities. You had better crack on, need to pay back that money you spent becoming a distributor. It is too late to admit the problems now you've sunk a couple of hundred quid into it.

ThrobsBlackHat

1carminestocky wrote: »

You are having a laugh......aren't you? Here's a really good site to put in your favourites folder:


www.google.com

Don't be sarcastic

UW distributors hardly EVER get to substatiate their misleading and inaccurate claims.

I just thought they may enjoy being able to prove something true.

I love the way the defence for being caught lying is "all the other people lie too"

ThrobsBlackHat

No-one can recommend the "best supplier"

You will need to change every 12-18 months to get both the best deal and add in cashback payments

The Britsh Gas ASA thing is a red herring because they don't have an army of distributors reinforcing their unproven claims on sites such as this. There are not british gas sales people posing as consumers who have "just found this amazing new company" etc. That is why UW representatives have to declare it. They've been spamming these boards for years.

Quentin has got bitter because all this has been done to death a hundred times before. The only people positive about UW seem to be their distributors or people who like the person who sold them their UW membership.

1carminestocky

ThrobsBlackHat wrote: »

No-one can recommend the "best supplier"

You will need to change every 12-18 months to get both the best deal and add in cashback payments

The Britsh Gas ASA thing is a red herring because they don't have an army of distributors reinforcing their unproven claims on sites such as this. There are not british gas sales people posing as consumers who have "just found this amazing new company" etc. That is why UW representatives have to declare it. They've been spamming these boards for years.

Quentin has got bitter because all this has been done to death a hundred times before. The only people positive about UW seem to be their distributors or people who like the person who sold them their UW membership.

Whatever. You seemed like you had a spark of originality going on there for a bit. I was wrong. :rolleyes:

Decado23

Ok, first things first - as per Martin's request in the first post: I am an independent distributor for Utility Warehouse.

Quentin wrote: »

You include mention of the guarantees in your presentation. So what are the guarantees?

Energy 'Triple value guarantee'
1. For Gas, we guarantee our prices will always be cheaper than British Gas, wherever you live in the UK.
2. For your electricity, we guarantee our prices will always be cheaper than the prices charged by the regional electricity supplier for the area where you live.
3.And for your complete peace of mind we guarantee our prices will always remain competetive compared with the cheapest standard tariffs available from the "Big 6" suppliers.

Quentin wrote: »

Your guarantees to be competitive don't include any on line tariffs, any dual fuel tariffs, you don't include your club fee in the guarantee, and all you guarantee is to be "competitive" with the big 6.

All true, unfortunately. Any UW distributer trying to sell energy services by claiming we're the cheapest is misleading you - I'll optimistically hope that it's through their own ignorance or misunderstanding of the guarantee rather than intentional deception.

Quentin wrote: »

But what do you mean by "competitive"? How does any of your customers claim against the guarantee? What remedy do they have?

As I understand it (and I could be wrong), UW prices are regularly (monthly? not 100% sure) compared to an average of the big six prices and, if necessary, adjusted accordingly. Comparisons are based on 'standard domestic usage profiles' - if your individual usage is wildly different than the standard profiles it's possible UW prices may not be great for you. The only remedy here if you are not satisfied would be to move to a supplier that has a tariff more appropriate to your usage profile.

Quentin wrote: »

The last rep who tried to answer this claimed that should anyone find you weren't the cheapest, then you would pricematch, but even his colleague uw reps jumped on him for that saying it wasn't true.

That rep is clearly misinformed - I've seen no official UW literature making that claim and i'd imagine that guy could have his distributor agreement terminated if he continues like that. It's possible he/she was confused with the home phone service, although that only claims to always be cheaper than BT.

Quentin wrote: »

It seems worthless.

Unless you can help?

To be perfectly honest, it probably is - for you. Without wishing to get too deep into sweeping generalisations I'd assume many of the people who frequent sites like this one are the kind of people that are willing, perhaps even happy, to regularly switch supplier, always looking for the best deal etc. For people like that, UW is probably not desireable as they probably won't be the cheapest in many cases.

The value in UW is perhaps less visible but just as real. My own personal reasons for switching to UW are simple... I don't want to have to watch the prices constantly, I can do without the hassle of switching supplier every few months, I just want to get on with my life. Having switched to the cheapest supplier a couple of times and, without fail, seen their prices rocket up within the next few months, I'm happy knowing that even if my gas & electricity aren't the cheapest in any given month, they're not the most expensive either and that overall I'll be getting a reasonable price.

When I factor in the other benefits that are available - 5% cashback in about 24 high street stores, Phone and internet £10 / month cheaper than I was paying virgin, free calls to uk land lines... not really a hard decision for me.

ThrobsBlackHat

Decado23 wrote: »

Energy 'Triple value guarantee'
1. For Gas, we guarantee our prices will always be cheaper than British Gas, wherever you live in the UK.

Which british gas tariff?

Which payment option?

Does that include the membership fee?

Quentin

Isn't the small print to the "guarantee" the clue to its real worthlessness? (It doesn't include the "club" membership fee, and doesn't attempt to "compete" with any competitor's cheaper dual fuel or on line tariffs, and this includes those provided by British Gas and the local regional electricity supplier.)

The only remedy here if you are not satisfied would be to move to a supplier that has a tariff more appropriate to your usage profile.

Thank you for being frank - reading betwen your lines, you are agreeing that this isn't a guarantee at all - there is no way you can use it or make a claim against it! So not a "guarantee", just misleading advertising copy.

Decado23 wrote: »

When I factor in the other benefits that are available - 5% cashback in about 24 high street stores.......

This is just more misleading info/promotion from a uw rep. They don't give you any cashback at all!

They have a "top up" cash card, which you first must load with cash and use it at their partner stores. The cash you put on the card is not protected in any way (if uw goes bust, you lose any cash you have on the card, and unlike using a normal credit card, your purchases have none of the cca protection given to normal card purchases)

The card doesn't give cashback - the most you can get is a discount applied to your uw bill.

Even if you are prepared to accept the risks and use the card, you can never get the promoted 5% discount figure as you have to pay the uw for the "privilege" of owning and using the card. You must pay £10 to get the card and after 6 months you must pay on going monthly charges (whether or not you use the card), and you must always pay a charge every time you top up. (And of course lose interest on the money you have used to top up the card).

So not quite the "benefit" as described.