Co-operative Energy reviews: Give your feedback

Consumerist

Anthorn wrote: »

I'm not splitting hairs at all. My reply is based on what you yourself posted:

Ergo either the DD was not in fact cancelled by the Co-op Energy on their system or your bank details are recorded elsewhere on the Co-op Energy system.

It doesn't matter a jot whether Co-op had my bank details in their system. For all I know, they still have them now The point was that they couldn't take any more money from my bank i.e. the direct debit was cancelled.

Anthorn

Consumerist wrote: »

It doesn't matter a jot whether Co-op had my bank details in their system. For all I know, they still have them now The point was that they couldn't take any more money from my bank i.e. the direct debit was cancelled.

But they still had your bank details in order for them to send the refund to your bank. That's my point. Ergo they cannot have cancelled the Direct debit on their system. That's also my point.

Consumerist

Anthorn wrote: »

But they still had your bank details in order for them to send the refund to your bank. That's my point. Ergo they cannot have cancelled the Direct debit on their system. That's also my point.

Again, you are splitting hairs.

I agree that they must have had a record of my bank account details. But it was not an active direct debit they had because it had been cancelled by me and no payments to them could have been made by using the (cancelled) DD mandate.

There was no record at on my bank account of a payment request from Co-op Energy (which would have been subsequently refunded) so I must assume that no further requests were made from Co-op using the DD mandate -- or my bank intercepted the request for payment before it even reached my account.

In any event the DD had been cancelled AND they refunded my credit balance to my bank account.

This gets us to the original point that energy companies do not need to keep the DD in place -- they merely prefer it so they can continue to collect DD payments after customers have left them.

Since the "regulator" will not step in to help energy customers it's down to us to do it for ourselves.

valhalla12

ive just been onto coop energy and the have told me they havnt got round to do monthly direct debit at the moment so i will be billed 3 months upfront

can anyone confirm this

because it dosent say anything on the cheap energy club

Consumerist

valhalla12 wrote: »

ive just been onto coop energy and the have told me they havnt got round to do monthly direct debit at the moment so i will be billed 3 months upfront

can anyone confirm this

because it dosent say anything on the cheap energy club

If you signed up for monthly direct debit payments and they are billing you in another way - particularly 3 months in advance - then you should put in a written complaint and object to the advance payment.


If they ignore your objection then your bank should refund any payment taken (under the Direct debit Guarantee). Be careful that they don't put you on to their SVR - so I wouldn't actually cancel the DD mandate.

zmr1

I'm thinking of switching to Cooperatives Renewable — Fixed till 31 May 2020 tariff, my SSE 1 year fixed tariff is coming up to an end in 30 days, and this worked out to be cheaper than SSE's 2019 fixed tariff offer.

However looking at some of the comments in this thread, it's not inspiring confidence in my decision.

Does anyone actually recommend me switching?

Consumerist

zmr1 wrote: »

. . . However looking at some of the comments in this thread, it's not inspiring confidence in my decision. Does anyone actually recommend me switching?

Given the current upward trend of energy prices, I'd say that a two-year fix sounds like good sense at the right price.

The big question is whether Co-op Energy is a good punt.

I think it must depend on your aggro-tolerance level. From the comments on this thread it is pretty clear that customer service is absolute pants and, from my experience, it was ok until their customer service became involved in anything.

That said, you could also argue that you mainly hear of the bad experiences on these forums and you might be one of the lucky ones.

I would, however, check out the earlier report (above) of direct debits being abandoned in favour of 3-month advance payments. At least be ready for it.

Good luck.

point_zero

Hi All
Just for your information I wanted to pay on receipt of bill as not a fan of direct debits and thought I could as MSE site indicated same, when directed to their site from MSE and attempting to switch they only give DD payment option.