Add your feedback on energy supplier Sainsbury’s Energy

WattNext

As far as I know the new energy supplier should request your meter readings and then contact your old supplier and with them to provide your final bill. When that's paid or refunded the switch will take place. When you think about it doing it the other way around doesn't make sense because its your new supplier that needs those readings to begin charging for the new supply and its this switch point that releases you from the old supplier.

victor2

WattNext wrote: »

As far as I know the new energy supplier should request your meter readings and then contact your old supplier and with them to provide your final bill. When that's paid or refunded the switch will take place. When you think about it doing it the other way around doesn't make sense because its your new supplier that needs those readings to begin charging for the new supply and its this switch point that releases you from the old supplier.

Yes the new supplier passes their start readings over to the old one, who should use it for your final bill. Assuming the old supplier doesn't object, which I believe they can do if you have a large debit balance, the new contract starts. It doesn't wait for a settlement of the final bill. That can take an age, especially if they owe you money according to some reports on here.
When I switched a few months back, I got my final credit balance refunded a few weeks after I had started with my new supplier.

WattNext

victor2 wrote: »

...It doesn't wait for a settlement of the final bill...

Not sure about that but if the new supplier has accepted you then I suppose it would happen especially if the customer is a good credit risk. Like you say the old supplier can refuse the switch.

British Gas customers are vulnerable when switching to Sainsbury in that Sainsbury in my experience do not always ask their new customer for start readings. Instead what happens is that British Gas pass over an estimated reading. It would take three months and actual readings from the customer before things got sorted out. Sainsbury really need to stop this and always ask new customers for those opening readings.

Saves all the fuss and confusion.

pete7708

I joined SE (BG) on 24th February from Scottish Power.


I can now report that the switch over has finally been completed and SP have refunded the almost £1000 they held which was all down to SE incompetence.

MSE,
Almost 6 months to sort out a simple switch!!! I hope some of the money you made on this is going into better training for your staff?

Hern

WattNext wrote: »

British Gas customers are vulnerable when switching to Sainsbury in that Sainsbury in my experience do not always ask their new customer for start readings. Instead what happens is that British Gas pass over an estimated reading. It would take three months and actual readings from the customer before things got sorted out. Sainsbury really need to stop this and always ask new customers for those opening readings.
Saves all the fuss and confusion.

Sorry, but your advice is incorrect.

British Gas customers aren't particularly vulnerable when switching to Sainsbury Energy because, er, Sainsbury Energy.. . doesn't exist. No Sainsbury employees engaged in the delivery of gas or electricity to your home. It's a myth. Even British Gas itself has to admit, in the small print of its contracts and correspondence, that "Sainsbury Energy is a trading name of British Gas."

If you can't work out why, think of an energy supply firm with a really, really crap reputation : British Gas, right? Now: think of another household name with a pretty good reputation. Sainsburys, right?

So now, pretend you're one of British Gas's marketing mandarins who is desperate to rescue the company's wrecked reputation. What would YOU do? Answer: go see Sainsburys and see if they'll licence you the right to use their name. .. for a lump of money in return.

That's exactly what has happened here. Sainsburys Energy is false-flag advertising by British Gas.

Believing in an actual Sainsburys Energy is to believe in an actual Father Christmas. Nice idea, but entirely. . . unreal.

As to British Gas doing estimated readings of an especially damaging nature to British Gas customers? Not sure that it does.

I am sure, however, that when customers from other energy suppliers switch to Sainsburys-Which-Is-Actually-British-Gas-In-Disguise, British Gas couldn't give a booger what kind of distress, inconvenience and financial penalty it causes the incoming customer: it just makes up any kind of meter reading total, sends that to your existing supplier . . .

And presumably grins all over its fat corporate face while you argue with your supplier about the size of the final bill you've received -- a bill that was calculated not on the basis of your own readings but on British Gas's reckless fiction.

As to Sainsburys Energy: British Gas could set up shop tomorrow as the Mother Theresa Gas & Electricity Supply Company but it wouldn't take long for the mask to slip and the real arrogant, indifferent, dysfunctional energy company to become apparent.

Hern

pete7708 wrote: »

MSE,
Almost 6 months to sort out a simple switch!!! I hope some of the money you made on this is going into better training for your staff?

Training for what? Crystal ball gazing???

The UK's biggest energy supply company approached MSE with a special deal under the British Gas trading name of Sainsburys Energy. Thereafter, British Gas screwed up epically and MSE got it in the neck for failing to foresee that.

As one of the many customers caught up in this shambles (where British Sainsbury's total indifference, rather than total incompetence, reigned supreme) I actually think MSE did all it could to monitor the situation, facilitate direct comms between MSErs and British Sainsburys, and put pressure on British Sainsburys to allow immediate penalty-free transfers out.

That said: I won't go anywhere near the MSE Energy Club again, nor be taking the slightest notice of any MSE publicity of gas and electricity deals -- the fact that Extra Energy's name even appeared on this site suggests that really, the good folks who run MSE would do best to stick to running MSE and not branching out into areas where their expertise is minimal.

MSE is not the Consumers Association, and MSE forums are not Which? magazine.

victor2

Hern wrote: »

MSE is not the Consumers Association, and MSE forums are not Which? magazine.

I would just to that that MSE is no longer primarily about Money Saving, it is a business, which cost the current owners many millions, and they only purchased it because they could see a profit in running it.

oxters

I don't recall getting my cash back on this switch. Supposed to be 3/6 months. I switched in January. How does it get to me please?

stretfordmongrel

I got my first SE bill it indicated a cheaper tariff. I went online not on SE account just general search on SE website then on MSE Energy Club where I did log in. In the middle of my search and after only a minute or two I got a phone call from SE or BG it maybe or is the same thing saying we can see you are online looking at tariffs do you need any help? I was genuinely shocked at this. Flabbergasted, disgusted, and disquietened. To be tracked in this Big Brother like way is of great concern and I have asked for my records to be expunged for this purpose. It is a huge invasion of privacy and a very poor business practice. I will be taking this matter higher up the management chain and making complaints about it to OFGEM and Information Commissioner as well as SE/BG and indeed MSE if it was in anyway linked to them.
Not happy!:mad:

Hern

victor2 wrote: »

I would just to that that MSE is no longer primarily about Money Saving, it is a business, which cost the current owners many millions, and they only purchased it because they could see a profit in running it.

Good point. I don't disagree. My point was the inadvisability of attributing to MSE the research skill sets which the Consumers Association / Which? deploys.