MSE News: Fury as Iresa hikes direct debits

System

Citizens Advice comment for those affected:

Victoria MacGregor, director of energy at Citizens Advice, added: “To send customers a request for a one-off payment of up to hundreds of pounds on top of their monthly direct debit is unacceptably poor customer service.

“The standard practice for suppliers is to spread these payments out over a number of months. Instead, IRESA customers have received a bill out of the blue, right after Christmas when many people will struggle to pay.

“Sadly, this level of service won’t be new to IRESA customers. Citizens Advice referred the supplier to Ofgem for its poor customer service in November, following numerous complaints, including billing problems, long phone queues and inappropriately blocking customers from switching.

“Anyone who is concerned about this payment should contact IRESA and ask for a more affordable repayment schedule. If you are still unsure about your options, call the Citizens Advice Consumer Service on 03454 04 05 06.”

Source: Utility Week

poppellerant

We've also heard about customers waiting for long periods on the phone to get through to Iresa. When we phoned, at 10am on 30 January, we were told that we were number 51 in the queue.

Iresa told us: "We apologise to the customers who have been unable to get in contact. This is temporary and we are currently looking into the issue."

It must have been temporary since I started my contract last March.

jonsilver

My Iresa account went from my gas reading of 7567 in Sep 2017 to their estimated reading of 13151.5 in Nov 2017, and rejected all subsequent meter readings from me, insisting I owed them £1500 extra, which they were going to take by Direct Debit until I stopped them by cancelling it. So now they're applying interest to the account. And they failed to deal with or even acknowledge my complaints. My reading today was 8824. Alas I'm in a contract until August. But by the sounds of it they play the trick of blocking transfers if you don't pay their interest charges.

Seriously, avoid this company if you know what's good for you.

grumpycrab

jonsilver wrote: »

Alas I'm in a contract until August.

Do Iresa have any tariffs with exit fees?

Merlin139

Did you not send them a reading in October or November? As Iresa would have asked you to do?

Did you raise a ticket with them when they 1st applied the Estimated reading? Did you try to ring them and speak to them about it?

What did they base the usage reading on?

No I am not sticking up for Iresa as I am in the process of moving from them and I think the service provided is not existent. I do find it strange that you have had this problem since October and have not brought it to the forums attention before now and then you register and latch on to a month old thread!

grumpycrab

Merlin139 wrote: »

Did you not send them a reading in October or November? As Iresa would have asked you to do?

For information, my Iresa gas readings have been ignored/failed validation since November. Seems the system for handling gas readings is totally different to Elec.

System

grumpycrab wrote: »

For information, my Iresa gas readings have been ignored/failed validation since November. Seems the system for handling gas readings is totally different to Elec.

The system for gas validation changed last year following the roll-out of Project NEXUS. Prior to Project NEXUS, the Annual Quantity figure for your property was only updated once per year. Now the supplier has to validate the meter reading prior to entering it into the Nexus database. This is a copy of a post that I made last year drawing on information from Bulb:


Quote: This is down to a recent change in the way the gas industry is dealing with readings. Gas readings now go through an industry-wide validation process. Just to check they look okay.

This means it might take a little longer to show up in your account. But don't worry, we got your last gas reading on 16 June. Is this the one you were talking about?

This change happened after a big update for the gas industry last month, called Project Nexus. (Fancy name, right?)

Project Nexus has improved how the industry uses meter readings to estimate the gas consumption of your home and will harmonise how information is shared between parties within the gas industry, particularly suppliers and gas transporters. Unquote

Quote: The validation process takes around 2-5 days. It depends on the reading submitted. i.e. if the reading looks a bit off, it may take longer to validate. Unquote

I supply Zog with a gas meter reading on the last day of each month and I get a bill based on this actual reading about 7 days later which seems to concur with the above.

gardner1

jonsilver wrote: »

My Iresa account went from my gas reading of 7567 in Sep 2017 to their estimated reading of 13151.5 in Nov 2017, and rejected all subsequent meter readings from me, insisting I owed them £1500 extra, which they were going to take by Direct Debit until I stopped them by cancelling it. So now they're applying interest to the account. And they failed to deal with or even acknowledge my complaints. My reading today was 8824. Alas I'm in a contract until August. But by the sounds of it they play the trick of blocking transfers if you don't pay their interest charges.

Seriously, avoid this company if you know what's good for you.

you are free to leave....they don't have any exit fees

I've been with them for 18 months for electric only.....enter my own readings end of month and NEVER had any problems with contacting them,increased DD or any of the other problems mentioned on here.
Maybe its because its electric only but they get a thumbs up from me.......i think more people with issues will post than people with positive feedback

JohnB47

gardner1 wrote: »

.......i think more people with issues will post than people with positive feedback

I agree. I've been with them for just under a year and have now moved on to their current fixed tariff. I've never had any problems with them.