Add your feedback on energy supplier Spark

alwaysafterabargain

Thought Cheap Energy Club looked like something I wanted to be in, so signed up right away. However, we have our electricty on pre-payment meter and pay for gas quarterly by cheque. Hit a problem with this, but it looked like one that had been covered as said if you paid in two different ways you would need to set up two accounts. No problem I thought, except then spent best part of an hour actually trying to do this. Electricity, no problem, but then try to set up second account but it won't let you as says email address already registered, and also presumes you have an electricity supply so if you start by putting in gas, the electricity automatically pops up. Hence just went round and round in circles till I eventually gave up.

Revengant

I was going to go with Spark but then read their conditions, a couple are (my emphasising):

* Monthly Direct Debit must be maintained to the recommended level ensuring a credit balance of 1 month's peak usage at all times

So whatever they say you should pay monthly you have to, and your account must be in credit year round by your most expensive month

* Collection value will initially be set based on 1/12th of estimated annual consumption of 3500kwh electricity and 16500kwh gas before being reviewed quarterly to reflect actual consumption

I use half these amounts per year, so for the first quarter I'll be paying double the amount! So instead of paying £56 per month for three months, I'll be paying £112.00! So over three months I'll have paid £168.00 over the odds.

* An uplift will be applied during the winter months to cover the cost of increased consumption

So you will not pay the same each month of their 'recommended' i.e. forced, payments.... that figure will increase in the Winter! Even though the forced payments were worked out over one year....

I just wonder why MartinL recommends this firm! He should be looking at the T&Cs too, not just the discounted prices. It makes me wonder what other suggestions are not as they seem.....

macman

MSE doesn't 'recommend' Spark. Spark is listed by the comparison tool along with all other suppliers, and happens to come out cheapest at present because they're touting for new business and putting out cheap tariffs.
I was going to add that, due to negative publicity, Spark are probably experiencing a high rate of churn. But since nobody ever seems able to leave them once they've joined, that can't be true?

jalexa

macman wrote: »

Spark is listed by the comparison tool along with all other suppliers, and happens to come out cheapest at present because they're touting for new business and putting out cheap tariffs.

Is there a particular region they are targeting?

Surprised at several reports of Spark coming out cheapest with the Cheap Energy Club I performed a check with my own trusted Consumer Focus accredited comparison website (theenergyshop.com).

Spark were nowhere in the 2 supply regions I tested for cheapest to switch to and where not competitive either as an incumbent supplier. Best result was third for prepayment.

What exactly is going on with the Cheap Energy Club?

Edit:

OK, I'll answer my own question. Is this because of a comparison "default" towards the grotesque "pay in advance" direct debit terms mentioned in another post in this thread? If so then IMO the pressure to "cheap" mirrors what we see happening in the meat supply chain. Heaven help consumers who fall for "Cheap".

Wywth

yabbadoo wrote: »

Sparks website - customer service reviews, the good, the bad and the ugly!

http://www.sparkenergyreviews.co.uk/reviews/index

... and the entirely fictional :cool:

http://www.sparkenergyreviews.co.uk/reviews/view/554

:rotfl:

pipsqeak

The Cheap Energy Club told me to expect savings in the order of £248 per year. Although a little time consuming I did what I always do, checked for myself the comparitive tariff offered by Sparks and my expected savings turned into a loss of £38 per year. Not that it made much difference as based on reviews from Sparks customers alone, I would not touch them with a barge pole.

RoseQuartz_2

Spark are terrible, their customer services is/was actually a debt collector. I found this out in Aug '09 when they sent me a made up bill, then immediately started debt collecting, even though I'd paid my bills monthly by direct debit and had supplied regular meter readings. They were unable to send me a correct bill to prove I owed them anything, let alone the extra £'s they were saying I owed; My annual bill would be no-where near what they were saying I owed, let alone what I'd already paid monthly plus that. I pursued all avenues I could with the Company whilst enduring barages of debt collection letters & calls. I finally went to the Ombudsman,who ruled in my favour and ordered Spark to take a variety of actions, which they did not do. In Oct '10, after fighting through the Ombudsman, and a national newspaper taking up my case, Spark finally resolved my case and I was, surprisingly, in credit.
The other issue is if you have a dispute you may be unable to switch supplier (wording from Ombusman:Industry rules dictate that Spark Energy may object to a transfer where there is an outstanding balance on an account and we cannot prevent it from doing so. However, Spark Energy may allow your account to transfer away, so it could be worth a try.) They did not allow my account transfer. I immediately transferred in Oct '10 as soon as I had confirmation I was in credit, which, to this day, I have not received. In April '11 the debt collector calls began again & I wasn't even a customer of theirs anymore!! It took until Jul '11 & another nudge from the national newspaper to make them go away again.
It's up to you if you chance Spark but in my view no amount of £s is worth what I went through (funnily enough they are top of the savings list for my cheap energy club results!!)

halifax50

RoseQuartz wrote: »

Spark are terrible, their customer services is/was actually a debt collector. I found this out in Aug '09 when they sent me a made up bill, then immediately started debt collecting, even though I'd paid my bills monthly by direct debit and had supplied regular meter readings. They were unable to send me a correct bill to prove I owed them anything, let alone the extra £'s they were saying I owed; My annual bill would be no-where near what they were saying I owed, let alone what I'd already paid monthly plus that. I pursued all avenues I could with the Company whilst enduring barages of debt collection letters & calls. I finally went to the Ombudsman,who ruled in my favour and ordered Spark to take a variety of actions, which they did not do. In Oct '10, after fighting through the Ombudsman, and a national newspaper taking up my case, Spark finally resolved my case and I was, surprisingly, in credit.
The other issue is if you have a dispute you may be unable to switch supplier (wording from Ombusman:Industry rules dictate that Spark Energy may object to a transfer where there is an outstanding balance on an account and we cannot prevent it from doing so. However, Spark Energy may allow your account to transfer away, so it could be worth a try.) They did not allow my account transfer. I immediately transferred in Oct '10 as soon as I had confirmation I was in credit, which, to this day, I have not received. In April '11 the debt collector calls began again & I wasn't even a customer of theirs anymore!! It took until Jul '11 & another nudge from the national newspaper to make them go away again.
It's up to you if you chance Spark but in my view no amount of £s is worth what I went through (funnily enough they are top of the savings list for my cheap energy club results!!)

Thanks for this even though it might upset Wywth !

chris1973

Despite my earlier concerns as a result of reading some pretty damning reviews here and elsewhere, I thought i'd give them the benefit of the doubt and applied to switch my supply to Spark over 7 weeks ago, as I was now approaching the eighth week and still had not received any 'sorry you are leaving letter' nor a future date for the supply changeover so I contacted Npower who told me that they were unaware of any application to change my supplier. In other words, it appears that it has not been actioned. There is no debt on the account and never has been, and no other obvious reason as to why this process hasn't been started.

I tried to contact Spark on several occasions, whose phone lines seem to be terminally busy, I emailed both their main address and their Twitter one but have had no reply. Not everybody uses / is aware of social networking and not all account problems can be addressed via it, so it would be nice if some staff actually physically answered phones during busy periods rather than solely monitoring Twitter.

It does seem that the growing number of complaints aren't just limited to the many review sites, but also to their own Twitter site too, and when a company seems to have more real time customer complaints appearing on a daily basis than pre-sales / general questions on their own networking site, you begin to wonder whether it wasn't a blessing in disguise that it looks like i'm not changing over to them after all!.

If you look at their Twitter site, you will probably find that a lot of the complaints are from customers who have been waiting many weeks / months for a resolution to their ongoing issues, or are actually back complaining that the promised email / phone call from their previous 'tweet' still hasn't been addressed or materialised.

https://twitter.com/SparkEnergyUK

I've worked in purchasing for over twenty years, and one thing I did learn from dealing with thousands of different companies and service providers, that if a business can't accept you as a customer and accept your new business (and the revenue it brings) readily and smoothly without any issues or complications, then it probably will be just as equally lax and poor when it comes to sorting out future problems or things go wrong. But thats just my personal experience.

I know its been mentioned above, but even their own review site is pretty damning.......

http://www.sparkenergyreviews.co.uk/reviews/index

First impressions etc. Unfortunately if Spark aren't willing to invest the time required to switch me or answer their (potential) customers' calls and emails, then i'm certainly not going to waste my time in continuing to persue what appears to be a bad investment / decision either.

Jake07

Add me the list of Spark victims please. They are dreadful. Reeds Rains have a contract with them by which, unknown to the tenant, they switch you over to Spark energy. Is there a clause in the tenancy agreement about this? (I do not have the agreement at hand)

In my case Spark did not bill us for the ENTIRE 2012, and only after we moved out, they chased ME (although there were 4 people on the tenancy agreement) for the entire owed sum for gas (I had managed to keep the current electricity supplier). They were so cheeky that they went through a debt-recovery agent Clark & Buchanan.

Do you guys think I can legally request that bill to be re-issued as 4 separate bills in the name of each tenant? Spark DO have the tenancy agreement so they can see that 4 people were living there. Am I legally liable for the whole bill?

I have lodged a complaint with spark on several points two main of which are: why is 1 tenant liable for the bills of all, why had there been no bills for the entire year. I will keep you posted about the outcome of the complaint. If they refuse - do you think I have a chance with the energy Ombudsman?

Thanks