Avro Energy reviews: Give your feedback

millie

Just tried to renew it and got a message saying unfortunately we are unable to renew now please call customer services. I logged out and did the quote again told me to log in to see the quote. When I logged in there was no quote there. Can’t call customer services until Monday so I will give it another try tomorrow.

Consumerist

I suspect there is a limit to the amount of time you can defer a change-of-tariff request. My guess would be the 42 days they give you toward the end of your contract. i.e. the 42-day-wonder.

Consumerist

Telegraph_Sam said:

Seems to me that you always have the right to change your mind, and if the tariff you are on has no exit fee then you should be able to switch in-house or to an external tariff without penalty. Even if at or just after the last minute. It would be short sighted on their part if they made it more difficult for you to stay as an Avro customer (on a different tariff) rather than jump ship.

I think it's a question of timing.

Because many of us are on the 'SuperFixed' at the moment, which has relatively cheap rates, no-one wants to switch immediately into higher rates before the contract ends. Timing your switch date until the day after your current contract ends gives you the maximum time on the cheaper rates. It seems likely that you will only be able to do this when you have received the 42-day-wonder offer to renew.

2010

Consumerist said:

Telegraph_Sam said:

Seems to me that you always have the right to change your mind, and if the tariff you are on has no exit fee then you should be able to switch in-house or to an external tariff without penalty. Even if at or just after the last minute. It would be short sighted on their part if they made it more difficult for you to stay as an Avro customer (on a different tariff) rather than jump ship.

I think it's a question of timing.

Because many of us are on the 'SuperFixed' at the moment, which has relatively cheap rates, no-one wants to switch immediately into higher rates before the contract ends. Timing your switch date until the day after your current contract ends gives you the maximum time on the cheaper rates. It seems likely that you will only be able to do this when you have received the 42-day-wonder offer to renew.

If that`s trhe case why show and offer it on your account well before the 42 day deadline?

Leofric_2

I joined Avro Energy a year ago, and I was pretty happy with them, the price was good and the switch process worked fine. I liked the fact that they provided itemised monthly bills, assuming that you sent in your readings by the 28th of the month. I had signed up for a 12 month fix.
However the problem started when the fix was coming to an end, they sent me a quote saying that on their new fix my monthly payments would increase from £75.00 to £109.00, roughly a 45% increase, so I then used various comparison sites to get some new quotes, and surprise, surprise Avro Energy was near the top of the list with a quote of £91. When I contacted Avro ( a slow process as they claim that they don't have many staff because of the pandemic, they took about 4 days to respond) they claimed that they would need to refer my query to their quoting team, who were currently taking 3 to 5 weeks to respond to queries, but that I should ask for another renewal quote from the website, as this uses exactly the same figures as their team. Needless to say it came back with the same figure of £109.
I should say at this point that all this happened just after the very cold February when I would expect my account to be roughly zero or slightly in debit due to the high usage in the past month, but no, I am actually nearly £120 in credit.
In my view this is a classic example of penalising loyalty, none of the emails actually addressed my query about why the price had increased so much, and they were very offhand, with a take it or leave it attitude. So I have left it, and am in the process of switching to British Gas, who gave me a very competitive price.
If I had to rate Avro out of 5 I would give them 2, which is a shame because they would have been a solid 4 until renewal time.

bagand96

Leofric_2 said:

I joined Avro Energy a year ago, and I was pretty happy with them, the price was good and the switch process worked fine. I liked the fact that they provided itemised monthly bills, assuming that you sent in your readings by the 28th of the month. I had signed up for a 12 month fix.
However the problem started when the fix was coming to an end, they sent me a quote saying that on their new fix my monthly payments would increase from £75.00 to £109.00, roughly a 45% increase, so I then used various comparison sites to get some new quotes, and surprise, surprise Avro Energy was near the top of the list with a quote of £91. When I contacted Avro ( a slow process as they claim that they don't have many staff because of the pandemic, they took about 4 days to respond) they claimed that they would need to refer my query to their quoting team, who were currently taking 3 to 5 weeks to respond to queries, but that I should ask for another renewal quote from the website, as this uses exactly the same figures as their team. Needless to say it came back with the same figure of £109.
I should say at this point that all this happened just after the very cold February when I would expect my account to be roughly zero or slightly in debit due to the high usage in the past month, but no, I am actually nearly £120 in credit.
In my view this is a classic example of penalising loyalty, none of the emails actually addressed my query about why the price had increased so much, and they were very offhand, with a take it or leave it attitude. So I have left it, and am in the process of switching to British Gas, who gave me a very competitive price.
If I had to rate Avro out of 5 I would give them 2, which is a shame because they would have been a solid 4 until renewal time.

So were the unit rates and standing charge on the Avro renewal quote more expensive than on the comparison site? It’s the tariff rates that count, not the DD.

Consumerist

2010 said:

If that`s trhe case why show and offer it on your account well before the 42 day deadline?

I'm not quite sure about what you mean by 'offer it on your account'.

If a tariff is 'currently available' from Avro then they will allow you to switch to it from the day it is 'available'. If you ask to switch to an available tariff, I understand you can switch immediately or defer the switch to a pre-arranged date. (I haven't done this myself, so I'm going on earlier posts in this thread).

If a tariff becomes available 3 months through your existing contract, I don't think you can reasonably expect to pre-arrange a switch to it in 9 months time.

Consumerist

Leofric_2 said:

. . . However the problem started when the fix was coming to an end, . . .

It's a shame you didn't post here before you took any action. Your focus should be on the estimated annual cost of the tariffs you are comparing.

In the event, I think BG is offering competitive rates at the moment so any differences should hopefully be reasonably small.

Rocox

2010 said:

Not long ago you had a choice of tariffs to switch to internally with Avro but it seems recently they`ve started to offer only one to existing customers.
Still with no exit fees yoiu can always move if they don`t give you the cheaper tariff,

I don't think this is correct as I switched to Simple and Super Saving a few weeks ago and then  a week later to Simple and Super 12M without any issues.

Consumerist

Rocox said:

I don't think this is correct as I switched to Simple and Super Saving a few weeks ago and then  a week later to Simple and Super 12M without any issues.

I wonder how many other energy suppliers will let you do that without charge.