Outfox the Market reviews: add your feedback

bubieyehyeh

I've left this bunch on muppets in December. They are the worst utility I've ever dealt with, but they are a order of magnitude worse.



They finally produced my final bill a few days ago. I assumed they would have started the refund of credit process. Thought I should check, so I started a chat and the answer was no. So if you have a final bill best to contact them to request the refund of any credit. Refund takes 5-10 working days apparently.

jaybeetoo

From personal experience, if you are no longer an OTM customer you can cancel the DD. When you get the final bill (6 weeks after leaving), pay them any money you owe by bank transfer. You will not be charged £25 for cancelling the DD.

Simples!

Stanbow

I received my refund 5 weeks and 2 days after my final bill was raised ( after a review on Trustpilot the final bill appeared, after chat and phone calls chasing refund it took another review on Trustpilot to get the desired result) surprisingly the payment came from Fischer Energy.

daverickard13

Echoing what others have been saying, avoid at all cost!

I was concerned with the chaotic emails in November and December about how they were changing the DD payments. Seems like they had no idea what they were doing. The only thing they've shown me they can do is take my money!

I'm a low energy user and my monthly DD was a little over £40. This was still generating an increasing amount of credit to the point it was about £90. As this was more than twice my monthly useage and was generated over the colder months it was unjustified so I requested a refund by email as instructed in their email. I never even got an acknowledgement let alone a refund. Instead they sent me an email stating they were more than doubling my DD payments to £96.47! I objected, stating facts and figures regarding my useage to justify my objection and proposed an accurate figure. Receiving no response to my email and being completely unable to speak to anyone on the phone I decided to leave. I started a switch to Utility Point on 22nd Dec. On 28th Dec. OTM took £96.47 from my account. My switch took place on 10th Jan. and Utility Point took my first payment as expected. Unexpectedly though OTM also took a payment on 28th Jan. of another £96.47, this put my OTM account £242.40 in credit! To put that in perspective thats enough to cover my energy useage for the next 5 or 6 months, maybe longer over summer. I knew I'd received an email confirmation of cancellation of the DD so I checked and very cleverly this was sent on 29th Jan.

I finally managed to get hold of them on the phone and asked what they were doing taking anther large payment when my account with them already had a large credit and they knew I was leaving. They said they didn't know why the payment had been taken and they could refund it but it would take two weeks! They told me to contact my bank in order to claim it back. I did this and Natwest were great and claimed both the January and December payments back for me which would be in my account on Monday.

Long story short, even if they claimed to be half the price of the next cheapest supplier I wouldn't go back to them.

I guess it won't be a problem for long as the way they are treating their customers I doubt they will be in business much longer. I just hope they don't take too much of other people's money with them!

BRYNEL

The T&Cs agreed to on sign up with OTM are null & void when you switch becase you are no longer an OTM customer ergo you are not bound to their T&Cs thee contract has ended between you & them.
The £25 late p/ment fee is false & is simply a try-on.
Thats the way to outfox them.

Cornucopia

BRYNEL wrote: »

The T&Cs agreed to on sign up with OTM are null & void when you switch becase you are no longer an OTM customer ergo you are not bound to their T&Cs thee contract has ended between you & them.

I'm not sure I'd want to rely on this. There are both contractual methods and general common sense ones that would enable a Utility company to maintain certain requirements upon ex-customers - the most obvious one being that they will pay any outstanding debts.

OTOH, OFTM's DD practices would appear to be well outside the norms for the industry, and indeed outside of common sense. I wonder if OFGEM has any rules about how DD payments should be set?

MoneySavingAtWork

Anyone know how long an energy provider has to refund a credit balance following the final bill?

[Deleted User]

Within two weeks of the final bill is the target time but it is not yet set in stone by OFGEM.

MistyCottage

I feel I could write a book on this saga, but I'll try to be brief.....
I have a house that is only in use for a couple of days a month, so VERY low energy usage.
I applied to join them in October 18 and got a switch over date for the end of October.
From day one, my log in details did not work (Not good for an online account) and it took two and a half months of complaining and broken promises before I could log into my 'Hero' Hub.
My agreed direct debit was about £28 / mnth and well above my actual usage, and on the low usage membership tariff. During my first month, all the direct debit hike started and my DD went up nearly 100% to some £48 after lots of complaining (inc. hours on the phone line) it came down to £39, then out of the blue I was told it would be £107 / mnth! Upon complaining I was told that this was the industry standard for this house, and that is what the direct debit was, despite only ten's of units of actual energy consumption . I was also billed for two months of estimated usage prior to me signing up, when the house was empty and using no energy! Also the membership rate jumped up, as their estimates of usage were much higher than the actual meter readings, that seemed mostly to be ignored. Well, in order to stop this loss of money, and gain some control of the situation, I started to transfer to another provider in December, but OFTM refused the change over because, I was in debt, because they were ignoring the actual usage and basing the bills on their own estimates. So I was forced to make a card payment to clear their imaginary debt just to change suppliers.
Now I find that they took another £107 at the end of January 19, even though we transferred away on the 24/1/19 and I cancelled the direct debit at the bank.
So now I'm still not feeling in control, as they still seem to be able to take money from me, even though I'm now over £200 in credit with them, and they are no longer my supplier!


:eek::mad::mad::eek:

BRYNEL

Of course common sense dictates that you would pay for energy used + monthly fee + vat between your last previous bill & switch date.Its also common sense that an ex customer is entitled to view & check the accuracy of the actual final bill.Even the law has enough common sense to recognize that.