Avro Energy reviews: Give your feedback

Neil290_0

Joined Avro, great at first, cheapish bills, but hardly noticeable, then out of the blue get an email saying uping the direct debit to 2K a month, once I finally got through,, (you can be upto 30th in a queu, and on hold for upto an hour, I discovered that I had used a lot of energy, fair enough, no offer of help when I said I diodnt have the money, no meter readings taken by them, yet they state they will read twice a year, I paid them the money, as I had used it, but it cleared what little savings I had, I complained time and again, yet got no offer of help.


Raised a case with the ombudsmen, who wrote to Avro, saying the had over estimated my bill, and to issue a refund, a letter of apology and a £50 apology payment, got the refund, had to chase the letter, which arrived a month late of the date of the letter, and still no £50 payment


beware, this company may look ok, but will not help you if you get into difficulty, ignore your pleas for help and even ignore the ombudsmen, very poor customer service and set up as a whole.


I advise all my friends and family to avoid

smipx013

.... which is why I don't understand why MSE are still giving them such a good rating in both the figures and their overall verbage when they talk about suppliers. It just doest bear a whole lot of relation to the reality for many people on this forum.


Either the rating system that MSE employs is woefully inadequate and needs an overhaul OR someting a little more underhand is afoot. I don't know which but MSE really need to address this as its making a joke of the process and I suspect that once people are bitten a few times they will start trusting MSE's cutomer satisfaction polls less and be more "shy" :-)


Paul

Consumerist

quietly_myself wrote: »

. . . When we contacted Avro they said we needed to pay off the remaining debit on our account before we switched. As with several other comments on here, their original estimate proved unrealistic and we were aware we’d need to pay off the excess when we left. However we had assumed Avro would give us a final bill as part of the switch - but instead they just cancelled it and relied on the new provider to inform us there was an issue!
In the meantime the deal offered by the new provider had expired and we now have to go through the whole process again.

If a supplier blocks a switch they are required under the terms of their licence to advise the customer of the reason why and provide details of what needs to be done to allow the switch. If they have not done that then they are in breach of those licence conditions.

I would suggest you start their formal (written) complaints procedure seeking compensation for consequential loss.

Consumerist

smipx013 wrote: »

.... which is why I don't understand why MSE are still giving them such a good rating in both the figures and their overall verbage when they talk about suppliers. It just doest bear a whole lot of relation to the reality for many people on this forum.
Either the rating system that MSE employs is woefully inadequate and needs an overhaul OR someting a little more underhand is afoot. I don't know which but MSE really need to address this as its making a joke of the process and I suspect that once people are bitten a few times they will start trusting MSE's cutomer satisfaction polls less and be more "shy" :-)
Paul

Sadly, the truth is more probably that customers are rating suppliers on price rather than customer service. Being a relatively new supplier, and a cheap one, the numbers having problems when switching away are only just starting to emerge and will take time to register in MSE polls.

When their ratings start to decline, as they almost certainly will - in time, it is likely the supplier will go bust or be taken over.

Watch this space. . . :eek:

DLS023

Service has gone down hill...

The phone line says average wait of 3 or 4 minutes, but every single time I've called it's been 5 to 10 times that waiting.

The email says they hope to respond within 3 working days. Some hope, double that.

On a house move despite being told 2 weeks beforehand by email, depsite being phoned a week before, despite final readings being emailed on the day, they didn't cease the services until 2 days after I've moved out, and I'm now left wondering how I get my credit refunded (which they avoided doing upon request weeks beforehand).

Simply don't bother. Might be the cheapest, might be being pumped by MSE for some reason, but they're one step up from having zero communication.

Sad thing is when you do actually get through, the staff are nice and helpful, which leads one to think that they are cutting the margins by just throttling the customer service.

Bobbymax

It appears that Avro are now utilising sarcasm as a means to maintaining customers.
When I complained that their renewal quote was ridiculously inflated because they'd completely overestimated my average energy use (they reckon I'm going to use 25 per cent more gas in the next 12 months and 30 per cent more electricity) I got a reply (not in the promised three days but 12 days later) that they'd actually miscalculated the amount and were raising my monthly payment £5 even though I was on a supposedly cheaper tariff.
Cheap Energy Club calculations (accurately inputted) suggest I should be paying much less (the account is actually in credit by about £150).
Needless to say I've already switched and will be telling Avro just what I think of them when I leave. They've gone rapidly downhill, as evidenced by the posts above, and I'm sure their customer satisfaction rating will reflect this soon.

smipx013

Bobbymax wrote: »

It appears that Avro are now utilising sarcasm as a means to maintaining customers.
When I complained that their renewal quote was ridiculously inflated because they'd completely overestimated my average energy use (they reckon I'm going to use 25 per cent more gas in the next 12 months and 30 per cent more electricity) I got a reply (not in the promised three days but 12 days later) that they'd actually miscalculated the amount and were raising my monthly payment £5 even though I was on a supposedly cheaper tariff.
Cheap Energy Club calculations (accurately inputted) suggest I should be paying much less (the account is actually in credit by about £150).
Needless to say I've already switched and will be telling Avro just what I think of them when I leave. They've gone rapidly downhill, as evidenced by the posts above, and I'm sure their customer satisfaction rating will reflect this soon.

EXACTLY... Did this to me too. Moved to a cheaper tarrif and they put my monthly payments UP from £82 to £89 per month even though by my own very careful calculations I am using exactly the same as the year before.. Go Figure :-)

DennisTenus

This is worrying as I'm in the process of moving to them..... should i stop it if i can?

Not sure who to go to though even if I can stop it....

Consumerist

DennisTenus wrote: »

This is worrying as I'm in the process of moving to them..... should i stop it if i can?
Not sure who to go to though even if I can stop it....

The new supplier is responsible for the switch so contact them to cancel it. There is a 14-day "cooling-off" period built into the switching process.

As an Avro customer of a few months now, I'd say that if you aim to be in credit towards the end of contract then you should be able to avoid their worst antics.

They remind me every month to send meter readings and then produce a statement so you can't easily fall into debt without knowing it. Their customer service is pretty bare bones but, for me, the savings are worth slow responses to emails and reportedly long telephone waits.

Reports on this thread also suggest they are slow to pay credit refunds. But if you are saving money on their tariff, is that such a big deal? It's up to you to assess your downside risk.

Edit
Just to make you aware that Avro collect their first DD 21 days after the date you apply to switch - so you are likely to be paying two suppliers for a short time.

DennisTenus

Yeah they have taken first DD today, annoyingly it seems you then after contact them to change the date, they don't take the date I specified when joining/switching!

I did try....

I believe if you sign up through a comparison site, it asks you for your preferred payment date, which is not something we can guarantee for your first payment due to the 21 day payment rule.

As a result, you are able to change your payment date after this payment but we are only able to do this once the payment has been taken.