Flipper Community

tjharris

Just tried this out and thought it sounded great. £25 per year and no charge until they save you £50. Fill in your details and they ran a search and appears they could save £373.... within seconds they have charged me £25.... but I haven't saved £50 yet! I have challenged them on this and it appears they take it on the basis you are forecast to save £50. In addition they do not underwrite the savings.

The benefit is that they can swap and change your deal up to 4 times a year, but likely to only be twice a year..... thus in my view, the benefit of £25 is for those that don't have the time and desire to manage their account, but if you have 15 mins to spare, you can do better. Therefore are you happy to pay someone between £50-100 per hour to swap your providers.

Just run it through Energy Club and the saving from the same energy provider is £405! No brainer!!

System

Hi Flipper. Might I suggest that your nominated representative has a read of the rules relating to posts by Companies on this site:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/site/forum-faqs

Former_MSE_Andrea

Hi, the company has asked us to post a reply on its behalf. MSE does not endorse anything a company says on the Forum.

Thank you for the review. As we wrote to you previously we are sorry that you have not been satisfied with our service.

As stated on our website 'We will not charge you until we find you a saving of £50.' A saving was found of over £300 and we managed the full switch for you and therefore you were charge for our services.

Yes, we are a service for people that either do not have the time to search through price comparison websites or who find the process confusing.

Not only do we find the cheapest tariff for you but we will also:

- Continue to check 4 times a year every year, to ensure that you stay on the cheapest tariff;
- Completely facilitate and manage the full switch from start to finish, including setting up your direct debits and liaising with the energy companies;
- Provide you with easy to read bills;
- Work purely for you, the consumer. We are an independent price checker, therefore not influenced by commission from the energy suppliers as are the price comparison websites.

Again, we are sorry that you didn't find value in our service and we hope that you were satisfied with your full refund you received last week.

Kind regards
Flipper Community.

riccume

My experience has been very negative.
1) Uncompetitive flip: one week after signing up I was flipped to a new provider, saving "£230.07/year" according to Flipper. I was very surprised: I had 7 months left on my very competitive fixed price plan, and I'd have had to pay a £40 exit fee. So I run the numbers; it turns out that switching would cost me an estimated £66.40 (plus the £25 Flipper fee) to the end of my current deal. All of the savings, which Flipper identified, were based on the assumption that I'd stay on the standard rate after my deal expired (which I'm pretty sure nobody on this forum would do).
2) I had to stop the flip myself: I immediately asked Flipper to block the 'flip'. They didn't, and after some back-and-forth I had to contact the new provider myself, and cancel the transfer.
3) Fee charged immediately, not refunded. It gets worse... when I asked Flipper to reverse the membership charge, they told me that I would not be charged, because the charge kicks in only once the flip is completed. I checked my credit card statement, and of course the £25 Flipper charge was there. So I asked them to reverse the charge, again and again, and Flipper never replied. I had to contact the credit card company and dispute the charge.
Long story short - I regret my decision to become a member of Flipper.

Tabsan

Just joined and got a flip from SSE to EON and I am happy with their reasoning.

System

I would be interested to know whether Flipper uses the Ofgem annual cost methodology or a tariff by tariff cost basis to calculate their savings? If it is the former, then as most MSErs know this could result in a massively over-stated annual cost as the end of a fix approaches.. I confess that I do not understand why anybody would want, or need to, use this type of switching service. It takes seconds a week to do a simple comparison and CEC will partly do what Filpper does for free and they pay you for switching.

csgohan4

what a scam, just join mse's energy club and do it yourself. then put in your diary 49 days before the tariff ends to do your own Flip.

paulpaul1308

These people don't take exit fees into account, and they assume that you will go onto your supplier's standard variable rate. This means that they can always show you "massive savings", but the fact is that you will actually end up paying *more* than you would if they waited for the penalty period to end before switching you.

AVOID!

JenniferK

Had a look. Thanks to the MSE Cheap Energy Club I am already on the cheapest fixed deal with Iresa. These jokers claim that I will save £52. The thing is that they never asked any details about energy usage, etc. Had I gone ahead I would be worse off and they would have charged £25 for the privilege.

Interestingly, these people also claimed that MSE only show deals that they receive a commission for.

Anthorn

It's very MSE to state that something is a scam and/or a con without any supporting evidence whatsoever. Just because it's an alternative to MSE Cheap Energy Club doesn't mean it's a scam or a con. In fact when I checked out MSE's Club I found it to be anything but cheap.

It's clear that rather a lot of people could benefit from Flipper especially those consumers including Pensioners who are lingering on expensive (Standard) tariffs.

An oversight of both MSE Cheap Energy Club and Flipper is that neither of them as far as I am aware take consideration of the Warm Home Discount Scheme which some people including pensioners are entitled to but not all energy suppliers provide. With Flipper it could happen that someone is with a supplier that provides WHD and then gets flipped to a supplier which doesn't provide WHD and then lose out on £140 a year.

My conclusion is that while Flipper may be of benefit to a lot of people it's better to switch yourself but not everyone has internet access to enable them to do that.

System

Anthorn wrote: »

It's clear that rather a lot of people could benefit from Flipper especially those consumers including Pensioners who are lingering on expensive (Standard) tariffs.

.

I do not doubt that many people could benefit from help and advice but I am not sure that handing over personal details to a third-party will help those in most need.