Avoid Extra energy like the plague, 68.499p standing charges

shadyadie

When our tenants moved out, we put our house on the market. the supplier we found out eventually was extra energy.

3 good reasons to avoid
1. a standing charge of 68.499p per day, £1.36998 a day for electric and gas.
2. They can't get the meter readings right (we have been on at them for months, we've tried speaking to them, emailing them, even sent them photo's taken by the estate agent on the correct days)
3. Even though they haven't sent us a bill and they haven't got the readings correct. they are still emailing us threatening messages, saying they are going to send bailiffs and affect our credit rating.

Extra energy are the absolute lowest of the low when it comes to energy suppliers, Avoid them at all costs.

molerat

2 & 3 are valid reasons but why pick on 1 for your headline. A high standing charge is only of concern to a low user. If it is coupled with a low unit price it could be an economical tariff.

shadyadie

We were a low user, and through not having received any bills we have only just found out the standing charge.
They are awful to deal with, their staff are pleasant enough on the phone, but the response is always the same that they can't alter it but will send a message to the correct department, but then nothing gets changed, emailing them isn't much better.
The house was sold at the start of December and we still don't know what we owe, but that hasn't stopped them threatening us with bailiffs.

I have had problems in the past with companies, but nothing to match this level of incompetence.

CashStrapped

Did you take a meter reading when you moved in? If so, it only takes a quick bit of maths to work out what you owe. If you did not, you just made things hard for yourself.

You may be a low user (annual use) but as it is winter your actual current use may be high, so the tariff may not be as bad as you think depending on the unit rates.

As molerat says, a standing charge is only relevant to the overall tariff and your actual usage.

In a comparison site, high standing charge tariffs work out better for me as I am an above average user.

A comparison site will always give you the cheapest result regardless of how the tariff is structured. People often get caught up looking at the standing charge when it is the overall tariff cost they need to look at.

If you want help calculating what you owe, let us know and someone on the forum will help you out.

shadyadie

The Only thing I have left to say is that if you are looking for a change to your utility company DON'T use Extra Energy as they are utterly useless, their customer care is awful and they are incapable of sorting out any issues and if they make a mistake, even if you point it out to them 100's of times they will pass it on to a debt collection agency if you don't pay, rather than correct it.

Awful Awful company I don't quite get how they are still in business.

paddedjohn

In your op you say that a tennant moved out, it's they who should be paying the bill and its then upto you to find a new supplier.

es5595

I'm an ExtraEnergy customer and I'm paying significantly less with them than with either Sainsburys or NPower. The customer service isn't great, but they now send out bills every three months and they always send the balance on my account back quickly.

The OP is covering the period the house was empty, between tenants moving out and selling the house, hence why they'd have preferred a tariff with a very low standing charge since I assume there was only minimal electricity/gas usage.

paddedjohn

es5595 wrote: »

I'm an ExtraEnergy customer and I'm paying significantly less with them than with either Sainsburys or NPower. The customer service isn't great, but they now send out bills every three months and they always send the balance on my account back quickly.

The OP is covering the period the house was empty, between tenants moving out and selling the house, hence why they'd have preferred a tariff with a very low standing charge since I assume there was only minimal electricity/gas usage.

If they preferred a lower standing charge then they should have asked for one instead of throwing the blame around

shadyadie

paddedjohn wrote: »

If they preferred a lower standing charge then they should have asked for one instead of throwing the blame around

Easier said than done, when the tenants left, it took them nearly 6 weeks to get back to us with who the suppliers were and then Extra Energy initially told us that they weren't the supplier. Unfortunately it turned out that they were.
We then spent weeks trying to get an answer out of them as they kept referring us to our web account that they had set up incorrectly as no-one could access it, including their call center staff.

We only managed to get the standing charge out of them when trying to sort out the final bill.

Unfortunately during all this we had bigger things on our mind, like how much debt we were going to be left in with the house.

You try dealing with Extra Energy when you have a serious issue !

paddedjohn

shadyadie wrote: »

Easier said than done, when the tenants left, it took them nearly 6 weeks to get back to us with who the suppliers were and then Extra Energy initially told us that they weren't the supplier. Unfortunately it turned out that they were.
We then spent weeks trying to get an answer out of them as they kept referring us to our web account that they had set up incorrectly as no-one could access it, including their call center staff.

We only managed to get the standing charge out of them when trying to sort out the final bill.

Unfortunately during all this we had bigger things on our mind, like how much debt we were going to be left in with the house.

You try dealing with Extra Energy when you have a serious issue !

I'm with Extraenergy at the moment (till month end anyway) and in the 3 years I've been with them I've found their call centre very helpful tbh.