Add your feedback on energy supplier Flow

leafyshin

My flow problems began after I left them. The final amount due wasn't taken by direct debit even though I kept the dd active as requested. I had missed a couple of phone calls but just assumed they were marketing calls as I'd had a few of those from them towards the end of my contract. The first I found out that they hadn't taken the payment was when I got an email demanding the payment within 7 days or face legal action. I immediately tried phoning and then emailed them at the address they gave me but they didn't reply until after the 7 days. I paid by bank transfer within the 7 days and I'm just hoping that they haven't also taken it by direct debit. When they did reply to my email they apologised and said there had been a problem with their direct debit system but in that case they shouldn't send out threats to affected customers. I've always paid by direct debit and consider myself a good customer, I only switched away because they considerably hiked the price. I can understand an IT problem but how they dealt with it was awful. I felt really intimidated by the threatening email and now I'm worried that it has affected my credit reference.

Former_Flow_Energy

leafyshin wrote: »

My flow problems began after I left them. The final amount due wasn't taken by direct debit even though I kept the dd active as requested. I had missed a couple of phone calls but just assumed they were marketing calls as I'd had a few of those from them towards the end of my contract. The first I found out that they hadn't taken the payment was when I got an email demanding the payment within 7 days or face legal action. I immediately tried phoning and then emailed them at the address they gave me but they didn't reply until after the 7 days. I paid by bank transfer within the 7 days and I'm just hoping that they haven't also taken it by direct debit. When they did reply to my email they apologised and said there had been a problem with their direct debit system but in that case they shouldn't send out threats to affected customers. I've always paid by direct debit and consider myself a good customer, I only switched away because they considerably hiked the price. I can understand an IT problem but how they dealt with it was awful. I felt really intimidated by the threatening email and now I'm worried that it has affected my credit reference.

Hello, I apologise that you felt intimidated or threatened this is not our intention. Your credit reference will not be affected by this, the only time your credit reference will be affected by a debt owed to Flow is if our debt collection agency is in contact with you and still payment is refused. I hope this clears up any worries you have had regarding your credit reference. Warm Regards, Flow.

ColinB

leafyshin wrote: »

The final amount due wasn't taken by direct debit even though I kept the dd active as requested. I had missed a couple of phone calls but just assumed they were marketing calls as I'd had a few of those from them towards the end of my contract.

I'm finally free of Flow, but not without further customer "service" experiences similar to leafyshin.

First, they didn't send me the final statement until I chased them. I wasn't too fussed about this because I knew I owed them money, but eventually I got fed up with waiting and called them.

Then the email with the final statement asked me to leave the DD active and the balance would be collected within two weeks. Nothing happened, so - mindful of leafyshin's experience (thanks) - I called them. They said they'd tried to collect via DD but it had been cancelled. I said no it hadn't but they insisted it had, and said the bank had done it. I subsequently checked with my bank, I could see online that the DD was still active, the bank confirmed it wasn't cancelled and could have been used. So Flow were either lying or incompetent, not to mention ignorant of how DDs work (they are agreements between customer & supplier, banks don't have authority to cancel them). I paid them directly to clear the balance (and cancelled the DD so they can't try to use it later), which was mildly annoying because I missed out on the cashback I'd have got if they'd used the DD as they should have.

Anyway I'm clear of them now. For anyone trying to leave, don't assume the process will work as they say it will, keep checking progress.

For the Flow Rep:
If you read this and leafyshin's post, you'll see that we both had the same problem, ie that you did not use existing Direct Debits to collect the final balance, after specifically telling us you would. Why ? Please don't blame "a problem with Direct Debits" as you said to leafyshin because you clearly knew of that problem before his post on 22/5 and my issue arose after that. Perhaps there is some action to take within the company to get this working correctly.

grhm

Same experience here!

Flow Energy failed to take the final payment by Direct Debit as they said they would. I now have a Collection Agency onto me to collect. Why didn't Flow get back to me if the DD failed to sort it out? Very annoyed and will avoid this company completely in future and suggest all others do the same if you don't want your credit rating being hit!

frankie

Don't know if a Flow Rep posts here anymore, its been a long time since we have seen them.

Maybe the new Flow owners don't want to have a presence here??

zoole

Well today was a first a letter from a debt collection agency for the final bill. Direct debit still in place on the bank account, same wishy washy excuses on the phone.

Absolutly NO contact from the company prior to this letter dropping through the door.


Utterly furious, 0%. This whole energy swapping thing is a waste of time, first time I've had a problem.

Former_Flow_Energy

grhm wrote: »

Same experience here!

Flow Energy failed to take the final payment by Direct Debit as they said they would. I now have a Collection Agency onto me to collect. Why didn't Flow get back to me if the DD failed to sort it out? Very annoyed and will avoid this company completely in future and suggest all others do the same if you don't want your credit rating being hit!

Hello,

We are very sorry to hear that you are unsatisfied with the service that you have received and would like to resolve this with you at your earliest convenience.


Please be assured that this will not affect your credit rating.

Please can I kindly request that you provide us with your Flow energy account number via Facebook https://www.facebook.com/FlowEnergyUK/, Twitter https://twitter.com/FlowEnergy_Help or by calling or emailing our Customer Services team (as we do not have a private message function on here) if you would like us to look into this for you.

We will endeavour to get back to you as soon as possible.

If you have any questions, you can call us on: 0800 092 02 02

Or email: [EMAIL="help@flowenergy.uk.com"]help@flowenergy.uk.com[/EMAIL]

We are open Monday to Friday 8:00am until 20:00pm

Warm regards,
The Flow team

Former_Flow_Energy

zoole wrote: »

Well today was a first a letter from a debt collection agency for the final bill. Direct debit still in place on the bank account, same wishy washy excuses on the phone.

Absolutly NO contact from the company prior to this letter dropping through the door.


Utterly furious, 0%. This whole energy swapping thing is a waste of time, first time I've had a problem.

Hello,

We are very sorry to hear that you are unsatisfied with the service that you have received and would like to resolve this with you at your earliest convenience.

Please can I kindly request that you provide us with your Flow energy account number via Facebook https://www.facebook.com/FlowEnergyUK/, Twitter https://twitter.com/FlowEnergy_Help or by calling or emailing our Customer Services team (as we do not have a private message function on here) so we can investigate this for you.

We will endeavour to get back to you as soon as possible.

If you have any questions, you can call us on: 0800 092 02 02

Or email: [EMAIL="help@flowenergy.uk.com"]help@flowenergy.uk.com[/EMAIL]

We are open Monday to Friday 8:00am until 20:00pm

Warm regards,
The Flow team

HonourlessWeasel

Now that I've switched, but my problems with Flow aren't yet over, I can finally give a full overview.


The problems started shortly after I joined - I was put on the variable tariff but not given a set amount to pay every month, therefore refused to set up a direct debit because I was not in a position to have them take an arbitrary amount out every month. I was never sent a welcome pack, so had no idea how I could pay. The first bit of correspondence I got was a letter threatening me with bailiffs if I did not make payment immediately - they could have emailed me to say that there was a bill waiting, but they don't bother doing this, they just tell you they're going to send enforcement agents instead.


During last summer they said that they had problems validating their customer meter readings and they were ignoring all of my submissions for months, in fact pretty much since I had become a customer in April up until about September or so. They were over charging me by hundreds of units every month and blaming it on a national software problem. I contacted a lot of other national suppliers to ask if this problem was also affecting them, they said it had, but had been rectified in July. Flow kept making excuses and not giving any kind of useful or rational answer.


Over a couple of months in the early winter last year Flow absolutely failed to issue me with a bill despite me submitting meter readings on time. I asked, but they've never given me a reason for why this happened. I ended up being landed with an enormous bill that was double the amount that I was expecting to pay in one go and it was almost unmanageable. No real apology, never got an explanation and frankly, that's not good enough.


Early this year someone called me and said that they wanted to sort out all of the issues I'd had so that I would remain a customer because I'd made a formal complaint. I'd made them aware that I'd realised they'd been billing me the same amount for both the day and night rate despite telling me that I was on economy 7 - I was told that this would be rectified. It never was, nor was anything else that I told the person I spoke to. It was an absolute waste of time making the complaint.


I've now moved to another supplier - within 2 and a half days of the request being made I received 9 phone calls from Flow's retention line trying to get me to stay. In legal terms, 2 incidents of something within 2 months would be considered to be harassment. 9 times in two and a half days is utterly excessive, intimidating and definitely considered to be harassment. I tried to block the number on my phone and it still showed as missed calls. I'm now in a position where Flow are claiming that a month after I've switched to my new supplier they're still not providing me with my final bill, yet I know that my new supplier provided the final figures weeks ago. The last figures that Flow have on their system are dated 30/04 and they ignored the last set of meter reads that I submitted in May.



I work very anti-social hours in the emergency services - the last thing I need is to be woken up by useless phone calls that are neither needed or wanted. I also am on a limited income, so refusing to give me a set direct debit figure was unfair, and repeatedly leaving long periods where they fail to provide a bill despite being capable of doing so, is also disgustingly unfair. How are people on a budget supposed to afford that?


Flow are worse than EDF and I genuinely thought that they were bad, but they eventually listened to us and sorted out the problems. At no point have Flow listened to a single thing I've had to say or made any effort to sort anything out.



tl;dr - don't switch to Flow - if they do bother replying to your emails, the response won't be worth waiting for and they'll never resolve anything.

Former_Flow_Energy

HonourlessWeasel wrote: »

Now that I've switched, but my problems with Flow aren't yet over, I can finally give a full overview.


The problems started shortly after I joined - I was put on the variable tariff but not given a set amount to pay every month, therefore refused to set up a direct debit because I was not in a position to have them take an arbitrary amount out every month. I was never sent a welcome pack, so had no idea how I could pay. The first bit of correspondence I got was a letter threatening me with bailiffs if I did not make payment immediately - they could have emailed me to say that there was a bill waiting, but they don't bother doing this, they just tell you they're going to send enforcement agents instead.


During last summer they said that they had problems validating their customer meter readings and they were ignoring all of my submissions for months, in fact pretty much since I had become a customer in April up until about September or so. They were over charging me by hundreds of units every month and blaming it on a national software problem. I contacted a lot of other national suppliers to ask if this problem was also affecting them, they said it had, but had been rectified in July. Flow kept making excuses and not giving any kind of useful or rational answer.


Over a couple of months in the early winter last year Flow absolutely failed to issue me with a bill despite me submitting meter readings on time. I asked, but they've never given me a reason for why this happened. I ended up being landed with an enormous bill that was double the amount that I was expecting to pay in one go and it was almost unmanageable. No real apology, never got an explanation and frankly, that's not good enough.


Early this year someone called me and said that they wanted to sort out all of the issues I'd had so that I would remain a customer because I'd made a formal complaint. I'd made them aware that I'd realised they'd been billing me the same amount for both the day and night rate despite telling me that I was on economy 7 - I was told that this would be rectified. It never was, nor was anything else that I told the person I spoke to. It was an absolute waste of time making the complaint.


I've now moved to another supplier - within 2 and a half days of the request being made I received 9 phone calls from Flow's retention line trying to get me to stay. In legal terms, 2 incidents of something within 2 months would be considered to be harassment. 9 times in two and a half days is utterly excessive, intimidating and definitely considered to be harassment. I tried to block the number on my phone and it still showed as missed calls. I'm now in a position where Flow are claiming that a month after I've switched to my new supplier they're still not providing me with my final bill, yet I know that my new supplier provided the final figures weeks ago. The last figures that Flow have on their system are dated 30/04 and they ignored the last set of meter reads that I submitted in May.



I work very anti-social hours in the emergency services - the last thing I need is to be woken up by useless phone calls that are neither needed or wanted. I also am on a limited income, so refusing to give me a set direct debit figure was unfair, and repeatedly leaving long periods where they fail to provide a bill despite being capable of doing so, is also disgustingly unfair. How are people on a budget supposed to afford that?


Flow are worse than EDF and I genuinely thought that they were bad, but they eventually listened to us and sorted out the problems. At no point have Flow listened to a single thing I've had to say or made any effort to sort anything out.



tl;dr - don't switch to Flow - if they do bother replying to your emails, the response won't be worth waiting for and they'll never resolve anything.

Hello,

We are really sorry to hear that you are not happy with the service you have received, and we would like look into this for you.

Would you be kind enough to provide us with your Flow account number (via facebook direct messagehttps://www.facebook.com/FlowEnergyUK/, Twitter https://twitter.com/FlowEnergy_Help or by calling or emailing our Customer Services team as we do not have a private message function on here).

We will endeavour to contact you back as soon as possible.

Warm Regards,

The Flow team