Cooperative Energy Customer Service

CliveR_2

Only use this company if you prepared to accept extremely poor customer service and incompetence.
I decided to switch to them for gas and electricity supply as a result of the BIG SWITCH campaign by WHICH.
1. It was difficult to get through on phone to Cooperative Energy call centre, with waiting times of up to 10 minutes each time I called.
2. They switched the meters of another household to my account and charged me for that households gas supply despite still being connected to my existing supplier.
3. They phoned and asked me for opening meter readings which I had already supplied in response to an email from them. Their reaction was on checking, oh yes but no apology.
4. They failed to inform me that they could not switch my electricity supply because someone had objected ( because they had used the wrong meter numbers - see above.) I only found out when I called to query diredt debit payment.
5. Two phone calls to same call centre 10 minutes apart provided contradictory information as to current status of the transfer of my energy supply to them. First call said gas but not electricity had been transferred (incorrect), second call said nothing had been transferred (correct).

End result was that I cancelled the transfer of my energy supply to Cooperative Energy, got the money taken by direct debit for gas supply to another household refunded and demanded and got compensation for the whole sorry experience.

MillicentBystander

I made the point at the time that such a small company taking on all those new energy accounts gave me EDF Customer Service meltdown vibes. :eek:

Terrylw1

Well, incase its any use to your complaint, they can't object due to an incorrect meter number.

They can only object based on the reasons given by Ofgem in SLC14.

See attached links of the Ofgem site, pick the supplier licence .PDF.

http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Licensing/Work/Pages/licence-conditions-consolidated.aspx

Terrylw1

MillicentBystander wrote: »

I made the point at the time that such a small company taking on all those new energy accounts gave me EDF Customer Service meltdown vibes. :eek:

The issues seen here happen to all these suppliers big or small. The question is how good the processes are and staff.

Its true that the big 6 have been around longer so their practices should be more settled but a number of factors mean the opposite such as system upgrades where they take a step backwards in how their processes run for a year or 2.

Any supplier IMO taking a mass switch will cause a lot of problems...the industry just isn't stable even so many years on...