Outfox the Market reviews: add your feedback

Thomas_Crown

hareng, once the price rise kicks in, they won't be the cheapest. Avro Energy will be £3.65 per month cheaper for me, so I am going back to them. I know that the price difference isn't much but I just feel uneasy with all this direct debit palaver at OTM.

thefly99

I only switched to OTM in October and have just switched to Pure Planet.

I actually have no issue with the split DDs but the implementation of it has been handled appallingly and gives me no confidence in them. Their email to me upped my EAC by 25% with no explanation why (and I've had no email about the December price rise).

I don't see why I should waste my time taking photos of my meter and haggling with them to reduce my DD when the EAC should only have been increased by 7% to cover the price rise.

Also in the direct debit notice I got after signing up they provided a dedicated email address for changes. When I emailed them to change the account number they said they can't do it by email and I would need to phone them. So why provide an email address then? I did phone them with the changes but nearly two weeks later my account on their website still shows the old details.

I will be writing a one star Trustpilot review (although will wait until my final bill is settled) and I hope everyone else that is unhappy does the same.

Pure Planet will be slightly cheaper for me after the OTM December price rise and I will also get a £25 Amazon voucher (there are loads of referral codes on Trustpilot). Even if PP raise their prices and become more expensive the difference is likely to be small and worth it to avoid any further hassle with OTM. I do have concerns that they are app only but I've never had to call an energy supplier (prior to OTM) so will see how it goes. The sign-up was smooth and only took a few minutes.

bigpaul66

Just had a read of some of the recent five star reviews on trustpilot. They are clearly fake

Telepyleia

We completed our switch to Outfox The Market towards the end of September, and that process was very smooth. And naturally they are quick to set up the direct debit and take their first payment in advance as stated. I think this is a good policy, particularly now that I want to switch again.

Within two weeks, at the beginning of October, they emailed me with a price hike of 7.4%. It's a variable rate tariff so this is fair enough, just a little bit of a shock since we've only just joined. Six weeks later, in the middle of November, there's another hike of 7.4% for electricity and 8.4% for gas. The increase quoted is on top of the increase already put in place a month before, so seems more palatable at first glance. And then come the changes to the direct debit schedule to reflect winter and summer consumption, even though my annual usage figure already allows for this. Isn't this the point of budgeting?

The monthly payment is now set to be double what it was in the first place. They have made projections for our annual consumption from just 2 meter readings which predict lower annual usage than I told them we use - from many years of personal monitoring - and this reduces their estimate of our annual bill so the price increases don't look nearly so bad as they actually are. I really don't like these bill shocks.

Time to switch, and I think I will never go for a variable rate again. We're currently £8.72 in credit so I expect the switch to be uncontested.

alittleowl

Checked my bank account this morning: they had reinstated the DD. So I cancelled it again and sent a fourth email to their complaints department. They haven't responded to the first three so I fully expect them to ignore it.

My bank have already emailed me back to confirm my instruction to cancel and block them and all their shady shell companies. At least being with First Direct means I was able to phone them at 05:30 this morning and talk straight away to a real human being who isn't just reading from a script.

Absolutely fuming. I really don't need this hassle! And I'm very peeved at the so called Cheap Energy Club, and MSE in general: there is nothing yet on this website to warn people, just that one article saying they've put their prices up by 40%. Nothing about this extremely dodgy (and possibly unlawful) and underhand things like reinstating DDs. At the top of the MSE website it says "saving you money, fighting your corner" - well it definitely isn't doing either of those things for us at the moment.

takman

Slickric21 wrote: »

Currently I’m fixed into the Whack tariff so have to pay £50 exit fees to leave per fuel.
Wonder if I can use this DD hike somehow to be able to leave with no exit fees ???

The fixed tariffs are a really good deal and you won't get anything anywhere near those prices now so it would be really silly to leave. Just because they are changing the Direct Debits you won't end up paying any more. I have no idea why people would want to switch from the fixed tariff.

takman

alittleowl wrote: »

Checked my bank account this morning: they had reinstated the DD. So I cancelled it again and sent a fourth email to their complaints department. They haven't responded to the first three so I fully expect them to ignore it.

My bank have already emailed me back to confirm my instruction to cancel and block them and all their shady shell companies. At least being with First Direct means I was able to phone them at 05:30 this morning and talk straight away to a real human being who isn't just reading from a script.

Absolutely fuming. I really don't need this hassle! And I'm very peeved at the so called Cheap Energy Club, and MSE in general: there is nothing yet on this website to warn people, just that one article saying they've put their prices up by 40%. Nothing about this extremely dodgy (and possibly unlawful) and underhand things like reinstating DDs. At the top of the MSE website it says "saving you money, fighting your corner" - well it definitely isn't doing either of those things for us at the moment.

The article doesn't say they have put prices up by 40% (which would be incorrect). It says they have put Direct Debits up by 40% in the winter but then they will be 40% lower in the summer.

I don't see how the Cheap Energy Club has done anything wrong, your still getting charged the prices as stated on the site it's just the Direct Debit amounts are different.

If this is causing an issue for you then you have serious financial troubles and really need to sort out your budgeting and save up an emergency fund. If you can't get find a small amount of extra money it's not really OTM fault.

henryhorse

OUTFOXTHEMARKET>
There is little I can add to the litany of complaints about this shambolic company. The Chief Exec' KEITH BASTIAN should be ashamed! 3 substantial price rises in a few weeks, a HUGE and unjustified increase in Winter direct debits, an offer to recalculate winter usage, replaced by a promise to repay monies wrongly taken,emails that are not replied to...all indicates a really badly managed company . One to avoid. I am one of the many victims of this appalling treatment and will switch to another supplier as soon as I can.

alittleowl

takman wrote: »

If this is causing an issue for you then you have serious financial troubles and really need to sort out your budgeting and save up an emergency fund.

How very unhelpful, you sanctimonious arrogant piece of work. You've clearly never had to struggle on a fixed low income with growing children to feed and a whole world of unexpected financial troubles that no-one could have predicted. It would be so simple to "sort out my budgeting", all I would need to do is dig up my late husband and send him back to work. And take my kids out of school and send them down the mines or up chimneys. So easy, why hadn't I already thought of that?

I hope your house falls down on your head.

Scatty

alittleowl wrote: »

How very unhelpful, you sanctimonious arrogant piece of work. You've clearly never had to struggle on a fixed low income with growing children to feed and a whole world of unexpected financial troubles that no-one could have predicted. It would be so simple to "sort out my budgeting", all I would need to do is dig up my late husband and send him back to work. And take my kids out of school and send them down the mines or up chimneys. So easy, why hadn't I already thought of that?

I hope your house falls down on your head.

Seconded. Not what people need to read. I'm a single person living on my own and I NEED to know what I'm paying out, especially in winter. I have a good job but every single penny counts.