First Utility, what are they like?

dipsy

well I applied through Quidco to swap and tracked £80 for gas & electric, heard nothing after inital email

letter from Eon to say sorry I was leaving, so I checked by d/d yep FU had taken D/D

they gave meter readings to EON from where I do not know, I went live with FU on 5/10 and the gave readings to EON of Gas 1052 and electric 53357

a month on and my readings are 81 on gas and 52217 on electric

I have emailed I have hung on phone for an hour and still nothing sorted

any clues how I sort this, this is beyond funny

thanks in advance

dipsy

does anyone have any tips for sorting this out.... they have now emailed me asking for 2 readings at least 7 days apart, well I have done this once before, I did the 27/10 and the 5/11, and then they respond to my email on the 17/11 asking me to provide two readings at least 7 days apart... they are a joke.

thinking of cancelling d/d, giving them readings and sorting it that way.

any thoughts?

cheers

KDR7

Getting beyond ridiculous with these now. I managed to get on the Fixed price offer just before it was removed, my application date was 5-10-12, i received an email confirming my application but since then nothing. tried looking on the application progress part of the web site which says they need more info from me but wont let me amend the details or tell me what additional info they need. Just spent 1 hour pretty much on hold to them and gave up.

anybody else in same boat? or manged to get sorted yet? any suggestions?

id sack them off but having done a quick comparison there doesn't seem to be any other fixed price deals around to compete

Aldridge_Andy

I have to be honest and say that my transfer whilst lacking in communication from First Utility, seems to have gone smoothly and the switchover happened today.

I was not told / a bit surprised that the first direct debit payment was taken on switchover day rather than at the beginning of the next month. Other than that, all seems well at the moment.

blisteringblue

Likewise mine seems to be progressing too. They have told me my dd is setup and when and what my 1st payment is.

I am getting all the British Gas sorry you are leaving e-mails

They have asked me for my Electricity reading this week and I think I swap over on Monday? I check their "where are we with your order" scale and I think I'm 1 from the top now.

The communication seems OK I've got all the bits I have needed over the process.

Bigun28

First Utility are probably the most incompetent utility company I have ever used. I applied back in February 2012 to have both gas and electric moved to them since they came up the cheapest on the USwitch website.

For the electric, it took them over 3 months to take on my supply. Part of the problem appeared to be that my property for some reason had 2 electricity meters registered to it on the national database, even though I definitely only have one. The issue has never been a problem in the past when I have swapped utility providers before, but First Utility refused to take on the electric unless I got the details corrected on the national database, which took quite a while.

The gas is a completely different story and after 10 months, First Utility totally failed to transfer it over. No apparent reason for the failure, but through that time, I’ve had several promises from them that it would be done in 6 weeks etc, and it never happened. No explanation from them as to why. Just when it didn’t happen, they would say sorry and they would ‘definitely’ ensure that it would happen within 6 weeks. In the end in September 2012, they told me that it had been so long since I had originally applied that I would now have to apply again.

I finally decided to swap to another company and e-mailed First Utility to tell them so in October 2012 and started the process again through USwitch. They phoned me asking me to stay and I said no way because of the incompetence. However, I discovered that they were still trying to progress my original gas application, sending me e-mails stating the apparent progress being made and wanting a gas meter reading from me, which I refused because I was leaving them. After I e-mailed them an electricity meter reading (because their site wouldn’t accept it without a gas meter reading as well), they then took the electric reading and put it down as my opening gas meter reading.

Finally in November 2012, after the new company had already taken on my gas and electric for some weeks, I telephoned First Utility to finalise my bills and they were still under the impression that they were still supplying my property with both utilities, and reminded me that my meter readings for the gas and electric were now due.

My advice would be to stay well clear. They are dreadful at answering calls, where I frequently waited for more than 30 minutes for an answer, once clocking over an hour on hold. Similarly, they fail to respond to e-mails, even those sent to them through their site. When they do respond, it often just seems to be a standard cut and paste response and fails to answer your particular question.

andy1832

abidk wrote: »

Yes, I've gone with the 2 yr fixed prices aswell, I can't see the prices going down. Some have mentioned issues, hopefully they've got their act together, I expect alot of people will be moving to them.

I went with moneysupermarket.com and should be getting £30 cashback

Thanks

Did you ever get the cashback? I switched to the same end of last year and so far 16 weeks later no sign of cashback and no response from MS.com so far. Also notice that their T & C's no longer list FU as a cashback supplier!