Co-operative Energy reviews: Give your feedback

Phosphoric

I've bailed out of Coop after only a couple of months. According to my usage their latest tarrif is the most expensive.
Just applied to switch to EDF Blue fixed until Feb2015. £60 pa cheaper and £40 cashback through MSE cheap energy club.
Hope it all goes OK

mardatha

I've never had any problems at all - compared to Scottish Power they are awesome. Re price increases, I like how they waited until after the coldest months to increase rather than before, like the greedy sods elsewhere. I enter meter readings monthly and get a bill quarterly and hae had no problems at all, ever. We switched a year ago.

JuicyJesus

Phosphoric wrote: »

I've bailed out of Coop after only a couple of months. According to my usage their latest tarrif is the most expensive.
Just applied to switch to EDF Blue fixed until Feb2015. £60 pa cheaper and £40 cashback through MSE cheap energy club.
Hope it all goes OK

Ditto. Sh*t service (hold times of 20 minutes not unusual; they decided to disregard my opening readings for no reason at all and estimate them instead, meaning previous supplier overbilled me massively) and now higher prices. Had to argue with them for a tenner goodwill gesture for something that was demonstrably their fault, which caused me a great deal of inconvenience and which I had to do most of the work to resolve because it seemed they couldn't be arsed. They don't seem to have the capacity to handle the customers they have. Switching to EDF Blue too, EDF have been good for me when I've used them. Not sure they could be worse than the Co-op are.

Seriously dire. Avoid.

jonroguk

I have been with the Co-operative energy for over 18 months now and have not had any issues. Prices have gone up and down the same as all the other suppliers but the main point is that I have not felt the need to switch and sift through the mountain of other complicated tariffs to compare. I feel confident that whilst they might not be the cheapest all the time, not having to switch every 6 months / year saves so much hassle and time.

I see some people have had problems with them, but I am sure there are plenty of people who have had similar issues with the other big six and you can never please everyone. I would and have recommended Co-operative to friends and family.

Salsajunkie

Phoned to arrange switch today as my current fixed deal ends at end of month, decided on fix date of March 2016 as the 2017 deal was £17pcm more expensive. I was advised the switch will take about 50 days.
Will update on progress.

labp04

Absolutely agree with jonroguk and would add that if there is to be any chance of breaking the strangle hold of the big 6 then only using smaller companies can do this. Some may want to say that this site is for money saving and, yep, this is true but sometimes a long game is a better way to go than short term wins. I have been with the coop for just over 12 months and have no issues other than to report that I find their cs responsive and prepared to help if sometimes slow.

bubieyehyeh

Co-op energy seem to be overwelmed by new customers. The phone lines take some time to be answered now. I switched my gas away from them in early December 2014 and they still haven't generated a final bill, even after asking them on at least three occasions.

I also changeover my electric from their previous single tariff to one of their fixed tariffs just before Christmas and this still hadn't been actioned it when I last rang in late Jan.

I had similar hassles when I moved to them initially, but it was eventually fixed and everything backdated, now wishing I had moved my electric away from them now.

The telephone staff try to be helpful, the problems seem to be with the backroom operations and I'm guessing understaffing.

JulesWantsToSaveMoney

Just a quick warning, I've based my search for a new supplier partly on the MSE tool and Which but also using my own spreadsheet (I'm an anorak like that!). The Co-op came out top in terms of price and good supplier ratings so I went to sign up today.

When I reached the sign up button it had a link to the Price Table and a statement that by signing up I'm accepting these prices. I clicked on it to double check and found that these prices are not the same as the ones I've based my calculations on! Those were Version 1 (the only ones available on their tariff prices page) and the ones I'm agreeing to are Version 4. A difference of £60 in the yearly price making them no longer the cheapest!

(Note: I'm not sure which version of the prices the MSE tool uses).

I've emailed them asking them to sort out their poor version control and let me know which prices are the correct ones. I'm assuming it will be V4 in which case its off to EDF for me!

** update - 7 days after my email still no reply. Even for a busy company I think 7 days is long enough to answer a message from a potential customer. I don't want supply from a company with poor customer service so I'll stick with EDF and transfer to their cheaper tariff. **

cliff_hanger

Maybe it really is their being overwhelmed by new customers signing up, but my experience of Coop customer service over the last 3 months has been pretty woeful.

As paying customers since May 2012, with no need to engage with customer services, we were happy - once we did need to speak with them, they vanished and became impossible to get ahold of by ANY means.

Since early Dec 2013 we've been trying to switch to a cheaper provider - and thanks to the Coop's nonexistent customer service, it's been far from straightforward. They held up the switchover, took forever to generate the final bill, and 3 months later we're still waiting for a refund of our outstanding credit balance.

There are long (30 mins is not unusual) waits for the call centre (remember, they don't know we're waiting on the phone to leave, we could be a new customer wanting to sign up !), none of our online contact forms /emails have been responded to at all - let alone within the promised 7 days. When we do get through to someone, no one can escalate us to the Customer Complaints dept - it's detailed on their website but doesn't exist in real life.

I realise the Coop has historically had good feedback, but everything can change in time. I guess the whole purpose of this thread is so others can read the good and the bad, and make up their own minds. Based on my experience to date, when our fix with our new provider runs out, I'll take a lot of convincing to give the Coop another go.

gradgrind

Just discovered this too. They take 2 weeks to answer emails, then insist that you phone in. Don't, unless you like smug voiceover man telling you that it would be much quicker to do this online. I don't think I've had a poorer experience.