Avro Energy reviews: Give your feedback

Consumerist

gokarna wrote: »

Having trouble getting through to Avro, the phone just cuts off when you press the option buttons. I have emailed them and although the recorded phone message says if you emall support they will get back to you within 24 hours the automated email reply says they aim to reply within 5-10 working days! Hoping to get a refund of the credit on my account but it is difficult to get any response from them.

Hi gokarna and welcome to the forum.

With Avro you need patience (and a good spreadsheet). If you hear nothing after the 10 days then you could start their complaints procedure (referring to your initial request as the start date for the purpose of referring the complaint to the Ombudsman after eight weeks).

AbbieCadabra

Nebulous2 wrote: »

Our energy usage was overestimated - not Avros fault, we've been living away fairly regularly, with the heating on a frost setting, and we've changed all our bulbs to leds.

However a credit of over £300 on a DD of £87 has built up, with December bill and almost certainly January one as well, showing a credit for the month, nevermind on an annualised basis.

I contacted them to ask for a refund on 17/12/18 with a promise of a response within 10 working days. That would be around now, but I don't have a reply.

Has anyone been successful in getting a credit refunded, without switching away?

I'm reasonably pleased with them otherwise, I'm getting to like submitting monthly readings, the tariff is good, my statements based on my readings help me to track accurately and the website is relatively straightforward.

I don't want to leave them with what is heading for 5 months DD if they are struggling however.

very similar circumstances to us, I was adding our actual reads to the account which showed much lower use as we were living away but Avro refused to reduce our DD until they'd got more than 3 consecutive months worth of lower use showing.

I only managed to get a refund of the accrued credit on our account by copying the CEO into one of my many emails & it eventually got forwarded on to their 'complaints dept.'. They will keep the equivalent of 2 DD's credit on the account though as they refuse to refund a total credit balance & stipulate the account must be in credit at all times.

CEO jake.brown@avroenergy.co.uk

The credit due from our account closing, it took them 2 weeks to close the account, but that was only after i'd messaged them on facebook (was the only way to get any response at that point as they weren't responding to emails within 10 days as stated). they only do one refund run per week on a Friday (!!) so ours was due to be processed 14.12.18 & received within 10 working days.

as per my last post, it appears no refunds were done in at least the 2 weeks prior to Xmas, possibly longer, & after emailing the CEO again, I was promised last Thursday that I'd now receive it within 2 days. That will be tomorrow latest in our bank.... we shall see.

Consumerist

AbbieCadabra wrote: »

. . . They will keep the equivalent of 2 DD's credit on the account though as they refuse to refund a total credit balance & stipulate the account must be in credit at all times.

CEO [EMAIL="jake.brown@avroenergy.co.uk"]jake.brown@avroenergy.co.uk[/EMAIL]

. . .

If a supplier refuses a refund they must justify it. A statement of an arbitrary policy is not a justification for their refusal. During the winter months, however, it may be reasonable but in the spring, for example, it would not unless there were other circumstances e.g tariff or price changes.

Thanks for sharing your experiences and the CEO's email address.

polymaff

Nebulous2 wrote: »

Has anyone been successful in getting a credit refunded, without switching away?

Yes. Had a credit balance, last autumn, of two-months worth, asked for it all back and they refunded half that - which is what I was expecting to get back.

I'm within a few days of my first year with AVRO and am, in real time, 1.6 months in credit. That's partly due to the mild extended autumn we still seem to be enjoying - but I should have beaten them down twelve months ago.

AbbieCadabra

no great surprise, but despite a further promise last Thursday of our refund being received within 2 working days, nothing has been received...

Leear

Leear wrote: »

They are chessing me off now.

I gave them my meter readings on the morning of the 31 December and just got my estimated bill dated the 30th December!

I have also asked them for my actual useage for the whole year for both fuels, in kWh and cost as it was not supplied.

Avro just replied saying:-

"Thank you for your email.

Unfortunately I cannot locate your account as your email address is not registered on our system.

For data protection purposes, I would therefore require you to confirm the email address associated with your account, your full name and full address so that I can assist you with your query.

Speaking non specifically, we do not offer an annual statement."

Consumerist

Leear wrote: »

Avro just replied saying:-

"Thank you for your email.

Unfortunately I cannot locate your account as your email address is not registered on our system.

They should go into show biz as stand-up comics.

AbbieCadabra

AbbieCadabra wrote: »

no great surprise, but despite a further promise last Thursday of our refund being received within 2 working days, nothing has been received...

our refund is finally showing in the bank today. 6 weeks from when we advised final reads for the account to be closed, going by their standards & the other complaints I've seen, this is very fast for them!

nightmare company & very glad to be finally rid of them.

I had a quick look on TrustPilot last week, literally hundreds of 5 star reviews were posted over the Xmas period, all with the marker "verified order, customer was invited to write this review by Avro". A recent one even states "To be honest, I've only written this "review" because I was nagged into it with offers of being entered into a draw!".

If you filter to see only 1 & 2 star reviews, they just repeat the bad experiences posted here & very, very few of them are reviews prompted by Avro. The majority of the new 4/5 star reviews are pretty worthless anyway as they're a new customer & only just switched, but yet another sign of a failing company I think.

Consumerist

AbbieCadabra wrote: »

. . . I had a quick look on TrustPilot last week, literally hundreds of 5 star reviews were posted over the Xmas period, all with the marker "verified order, customer was invited to write this review by Avro". A recent one even states "To be honest, I've only written this "review" because I was nagged into it with offers of being entered into a draw!". . ..

An interesting observation. Thanks for sharing.

Sadly, MSE's energy polls seem to suffer the same misleading ratings due to the question being asked in the poll. If you are rating your current supplier, you don't have a chance to rate the previous supplier with which you may have had difficulties leaving.

Perhaps MSE should modify their energy-poll question if they want the poll results to be meaningful.

sillygoose

Oh what to do...!

Just coming to the end of my first fixed year with them, and its been smooth running generally, my payment has been accurate and kept me in credit without a big balance building.

I am totally shocked at how much the market has gone up in that last year, the best quotes are now £500 a year :eek::eek::eek: more expensive than the Avro deal that is ending.

Thing is Avro is still the cheapest fixed deal for me so do I just renew and hope its OK?

Also their old tariff was the same rate all year, new one is high in winter and low in summer but the difference is very large, going to end up with a lot of credit by spring, and I dislike lending companies my money for free but it appears refunds are near impossible.