Utilita - Somone help please :(

HannahCF

I hope someone can help me. I am so upset I could cry.
I was stopped on the street by a sales person for Utilita. Said they were the cheapest on the market, free smart meters, top up online so no need to go to the store. They did a thing to see that they were the cheapest too. Great I thought. So I signed up.

Smart meters were fitted in about 4 weeks or so later and I have been with them since November.

I am actually WORSE off with them. If I switched to eon, I'd be better off my £80 a year, which is a lot of money. I live in a 2 bed flat and have 2 children. I work so I am out during the day but home on evenings. I use the gas in the morning to heat up the house while we all get ready and again to heat up when we get home. I turn off when we go bed. On weekends it's on for a few hours, 4 at the most. I have used £25 in gas in 6 days and I have hardly been home. They cut me off over £2.50 and when I tried to use their £10 family credit emergency thing it took 2 hours for it to register on my meter!

Apparently I cant switch either as I am locked in a 12 month contract with them. I wasnt aware of this otherwise I would never have switched. I thought the whole point of being on prepayment is that you can switch whenever you like? The salesman never told me I'd be locked in a contract, I only found out when I checked their facebook page! I have complained via facebook and I just get told to call customer services. I call customer service and no one ever answer's their phone. I have emailed them and no one replies. It's so frustrating. I was promised all these things and all I got is expensive smart meters that are robbing me of my own money. The amount of times I have asked how to leave them, it mentions nothing on their website about leaving other than leaving once the 12 months is up. I cant stay with them another 8 months. I have been with them 4 months already and they have had nearly £600 off me.

Can anyone help me? Has anyone else had dealings with them and actually got somewhere because people I have spoke to who have had the same kind of problems as me can never get through to an actual person and just gets passed around from pillar to post.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

footyguy

HannahCF wrote: »

I hope someone can help me. I am so upset I could cry.
I was stopped on the street by a sales person for Utilita. Said they were the cheapest on the market, free smart meters, top up online so no need to go to the store. They did a thing to see that they were the cheapest too. Great I thought. So I signed up.

Smart meters were fitted in about 4 weeks or so later and I have been with them since November.

I am actually WORSE off with them. If I switched to eon, I'd be better off my £80 a year, which is a lot of money. I live in a 2 bed flat and have 2 children. I work so I am out during the day but home on evenings. I use the gas in the morning to heat up the house while we all get ready and again to heat up when we get home. I turn off when we go bed. On weekends it's on for a few hours, 4 at the most. I have used £25 in gas in 6 days and I have hardly been home. They cut me off over £2.50 and when I tried to use their £10 family credit emergency thing it took 2 hours for it to register on my meter!

Apparently I cant switch either as I am locked in a 12 month contract with them. I wasnt aware of this otherwise I would never have switched. I thought the whole point of being on prepayment is that you can switch whenever you like? The salesman never told me I'd be locked in a contract, I only found out when I checked their facebook page! I have complained via facebook and I just get told to call customer services. I call customer service and no one ever answer's their phone. I have emailed them and no one replies. It's so frustrating. I was promised all these things and all I got is expensive smart meters that are robbing me of my own money. The amount of times I have asked how to leave them, it mentions nothing on their website about leaving other than leaving once the 12 months is up. I cant stay with them another 8 months. I have been with them 4 months already and they have had nearly £600 off me.

Can anyone help me? Has anyone else had dealings with them and actually got somewhere because people I have spoke to who have had the same kind of problems as me can never get through to an actual person and just gets passed around from pillar to post.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

http://www.utilita.co.uk/frontend/files/userfiles/files/Complaints-Procedure-dec-2014.pdf

That will get you a response - or the ombudsman can help you
after 8 weeks if necesseary.

Whether it will be the response you are hoping for is another matter. You had a cooling off period to cancel within, but as that has now passed then you will normally be tied in for 12 months.

But if you can prove the things you allege (or the company cannot disprove them), then the company (or perhaps the ombudsman if necessary) should look on things favourably for you,

Good luck!

chris1973

Never believe anything a salesperson tells you, especially one making the bulk of their wages from commission. I've never heard of a Saint Utilita so i'm sure they weren't all cheerful volunteers hanging around there just out of the kindness of their hearts in order to save every passing stranger large amounts of cash on their energy bills.

I assume at some point you were given the opportunity to review your 'new' energy tariff rates, and that they were stated somewhere either on paperwork from Utilita, or were openly and freely displayed on their website?. Did you compare their tariff prices against what you were paying at the time, or multiply your annual usage against your new rate to see if you would actually be better / worse off during the cooling off period?. If not, then regardless of what anybody may have said on the street, then you are pretty much stuck, as you have agreed to be supplied at that tariff for a period of twelve months.

According to this, you can leave early by paying them £50, although it doesn't say if that's £50 per fuel or £50 in total, but it should be stated somewhere in your paperwork

http://www.switchin5.com/supply-utilita.php

Instead of crying, try something more direct.

Granny and Grandad's methods of communication, although long winded are often the best for getting results (and will leave a paper trail you can refer to if it reaches the stage of making an external complaint), so I suggest you send them a letter, with your account / meter numbers and stating your desire to leave the contract(s) early, and include a cheque for whatever the cost of leaving the fuel / fuels they currently supply you. End the letter by stating that since you have now paid the relevant early release fee's that there is no reason to block any attempts to switch once they are instigated by another energy supplier on your behalf. Send it via Royal Mail "signed for" service.

Give it a week or so, after the letter has been signed for, then sign up to EON (or whoever you wish to move to) and start the switching process.

jayson043

How have you determine if Eon are cheaper? Price comparison site?

C_Mababejive

This is a common theme with Utilita. Your lucky,i have heard of some people locked into two year contracts. The other thing is that if the meter goes faulty, there is no arrangement for the gas emergency service to deal with it so they wont repair it. You have to deal with utilita,,who i suspect dont run 24/7/365.. If you can ,,get rid..

lvf

Someone had already mentioned an exit fee, but having looked at their website, I see no mention of it at all? Mind you, their website is the most cryptic I have seen in some time.

They refer to changing supplier, and to read 'section 8.1.2' of the T&Cs, there is no section 8.1.2 ��

But yes as mentioned, it should be mentioned on the tariff information they sent to you.

Also worth noting, they mention phone line problems on their website, so even when they go back up the backlog of calls means the wait time will be even longer.

C_Mababejive

Utilita meters can also sometimes forget how much credit you have. You have your in house display unit which displays how much credit you have. A situation can occur whereby your display may show credit eg £20,,so you think your ok,,but suddenly the gas goes off. Whats happened? you have no gas and think theres a fault.

Well the credit you put on was transferred to the meter module and your now burning it off. Meanwhile the comms between meter and display unit have failed so the display isnt being updated.

Gas meter burns off all your credit and shuts off. You think you have credit but you dont. You spend a long time on the phone to utilita. They tell you to unplug the comms unit,wait then plug it back in. It now reads zero....how do you feel??

HannahCF

Sorry, for the late reply. Could I not leave through them mis-selling? Promising to be cheaper than the big 6 and then actually being alot more expensive!

JJ_Egan

HannahCF wrote: »

S? Promising to be cheaper than the big 6 and then actually being alot more expensive!

Do you have actual evidence of that fact .

System

HannahCF wrote: »

Sorry, for the late reply. Could I not leave through them mis-selling? Promising to be cheaper than the big 6 and then actually being alot more expensive!

You could, but how would you prove it? The energy company will no doubt refer you to the contract that you signed - along with the detail in the small print. Personally, I would ban this type of selling but I appreciate that is no help to you.

HannahCF

The man on the street told me that they were cheaper than the big 6, that my bills would be halved etc. When he asked me to sign he said it was just to confirm that my details were correct and that he had explained what had happened next.. with the meters being installed etc.