Unethical sales practises at big well known UK company

secretenergysalesman

I have inside knowledge of some unethical things going on to the point i left the company as it was just too far for me the deal with from moral stand point. I believe its IMO pretty shocking.. i would like to expose it.... any ideas if i'm wasting my time trying to 'fight back' against a massive Corp.... It's a corrupt and bullying (of the psychological kind) is rife. Most of the business's we 'sell' to are small / medium business owners trying to get by in a recession, I will lift the lid given the chance as its shameful.
Any advice?
Deal with it move on, or try to expose?
Happy to share a few things I won't name company at all though.

Andy_WSM

I think a few examples might help people form an opinion?

StuC75

Unethical doesn't actually equate to illegal, and often sales jobs are about pushing things to customers - who at the end of the day can always say no.. Does sound like dramatizing matters a little!

naedanger

secretenergysalesman wrote: »

I have inside knowledge of some unethical things going on to the point i left the company as it was just too far for me the deal with from moral stand point. I believe its IMO pretty shocking.. i would like to expose it.... any ideas if i'm wasting my time trying to 'fight back' against a massive Corp.... It's a corrupt and bullying (of the psychological kind) is rife. Most of the business's we 'sell' to are small / medium business owners trying to get by in a recession, I will lift the lid given the chance as its shameful.
Any advice?
Deal with it move on, or try to expose?
Happy to share a few things I won't name company at all though.

I am assuming you are talking about an energy company. If so the following may be worth reading:

whistleblowing

secretenergysalesman

StuC75 wrote: »

Unethical doesn't actually equate to illegal, and often sales jobs are about pushing things to customers - who at the end of the day can always say no.. Does sound like dramatizing matters a little!

Can you say that without the full facts? No, thought not.

secretenergysalesman

naedanger wrote: »

I am assuming you are talking about an energy company. If so the following may be worth reading:



I did 'blow the whistle' at work ended up being off for 8 months on stress, had shingles which Doctor related to the bullying and the treatment from the then manager. Too many people had things to cover up to help themselves and i quickly realised that I could basically by the things i was exposing affect top to bottom.

Just a few unexpanded things:

Working to a 'margin' target by which we could as agent choose to 'notch' up business customers. So 'base' price is say 10p per unit but we could go up to 23p per unit with 13p notch.

Based on the above 'notch' we were directed calls from customers in debt with the company, they called a helpline number which was then fed to sales agents who would basically have customers stuck and unable to move supplier so we were told this is 'hot lead' data and we would instead of offering help to clear debts we would pretty much notch as high as our own morals would allow. If you didnt you would not hit targets ad then your life gets tough.

Targets were constantly increased but so long as we could get the customers in debt we could then cripple them with horrendous energy costs and we would always do 3 year contracts as that made more 'margin'. It wasn't sales as in the customer had a choice to move or find another deal, if they were in debt they couldnt move so were stuck between rock and a hard place, that for me was the reason it wasn't normal 'sales'.

If a customer called to get help it might be because there was an issue with the billing hence the debt, or a valid reason for the debt, instead of having a person to explain this too they had desperate sales agents looking for an angle to get a big load of margin towards target, so we would not really look into if the debt was 'real' debt or bad billing etc, why would we as we needed the sell the contract on big margin.
It was all high fives and back slaps for the most morally vacant of sales agents, some people disliked doing it but felt they 'had' to , some seemed to get a kick out of it.

We delt with churchs / charities / farmers / pubs, Churches were favorites as they were 90% old people at home acting as treasures, old farmers got a terrible deal also, it made me pretty sick at times.

Another thing was the faking of the margin we could make as agents. Quite simple really empty property back in landlords hands using no engery, we stuck in 3 year contract with massive notch generated huge margin, but it was fake, figures used for our targets, then went to the top and to the 'city' according to managers (hence why we had to hit targets). But these were made up of fake margin that if property we empty couldn't ever make that money back! Total fraud and yet when I alerted managers and those above them it was covered up and allowed to happen for years, 5 years in fact.

Example:

property empty, 3 year contract maximum demand meter 13p notch, MARGIN: 30-40k

But if empty it will use pretty much nothing but figures were falsified as they rated it as a using meter, even though customer told us it was empty....is it just me or is that not fraud? I told even the head of commercial sales about this and NOTHING was ever done.

sorry for the length, quite passionate about this.

naedanger

secretenergysalesman wrote: »

I did 'blow the whistle' at work ...

You should 'blow the whistle' to Ofgem, using the following email address: whistle@ofgem.gov.uk

They will then investigate your case.

Bark01

So at least me know its a SME B2B operator not a Resi supplier.

secretenergysalesman

Bark01 wrote: »

So at least me know its a SME B2B operator not a Resi supplier.

Ermm...ok....

naedanger

secretenergysalesman wrote: »

Ermm...ok....

Regardless of who were the customers, please do report your concerns to Ofgem via the email address given. Your concerns should be investigated.

Bark01

secretenergysalesman wrote: »

Working to a 'margin' target by which we could as agent choose to 'notch' up business customers. So 'base' price is say 10p per unit but we could go up to 23p per unit with 13p notch.

We delt with churchs / charities / farmers / pubs, Churches

doesn't sound like resi to me