Economy Energy stops trading - MSE News

cuffy_2

Don't know how successful I will be or indeed whether I am correct.

Very brief history is that my sign up tariff ended in Aug 2018. I receive an email 4½ months later telling my that my tariffs from Aug was going up. I emailed to say I did not accept the raise and the next thing is they went into administration a few days later.

I am now being chased by the administrator for a balance based on the new tariff. If I recalculate the final bills based on my signed up tariff they in fact owe me money.

My understanding is that under Ofgem's Standard Licence Condition 23 an energy supplier is required to give between 42 and 49 days' notice of a tariff ending. Equally they are also required to give 30 days notice of relevant changes taking effect. This means that domestic customers will receive advance notice and will normally be able to switch supplier if they wish to without being affected by those changes.

Just thought I'd mention is case anyone else is in a similar position or can advise if I'm totally missing something !

Sterlingtimes

Cuffy. Looking at your Welcome Letter (most probably an email from Economy Energy), did you contract on the basis of a fixed tariff or a variable tariff?

Economy Energy had the tendency to disregard its contracts and bully its customers into agreeing with its preferred position.

Consumerist

cuffy wrote: »

Don't know how successful I will be or indeed whether I am correct.
Very brief history is that my sign up tariff ended in Aug 2018. I receive an email 4½ months later telling my that my tariffs from Aug was going up. I emailed to say I did not accept the raise and the next thing is they went into administration a few days later.
I am now being chased by the administrator for a balance based on the new tariff. If I recalculate the final bills based on my signed up tariff they in fact owe me money.
My understanding is that under Ofgem's Standard Licence Condition 23 an energy supplier is required to give between 42 and 49 days' notice of a tariff ending. Equally they are also required to give 30 days notice of relevant changes taking effect. This means that domestic customers will receive advance notice and will normally be able to switch supplier if they wish to without being affected by those changes.
Just thought I'd mention is case anyone else is in a similar position or can advise if I'm totally missing something !

Standard procedure is that your supplier should advise you 42-49 days before the end of your tariff - Aug 2018 in your case.

It is then up to you to change supplier if you don't like the tariff you have been moved to. At the end of a fixed-term contract this will usually be their default variable tariff - often their most expensive.

If Economy Energy failed to advise you then you would have had cause to make a complaint but, since they have gone into administration, there is no complaints procedure available to you.

On the basis you have explained above, sadly, it looks as though you will have to pay for the energy you used on the new tariff.

falcieri

Popppet wrote: »

Hi All,

The only reason I even know is that EE has gone bust is because of MSE. I've never had any announcement from EE or OFGEM or anyone else, and notably no email or letter about my final bill, which I need to have to get my refund from OVO.

By coincidence, I started a switch from EE to Bulb the day before the announcement of them stopping trading. My first meter reading to Bulb was on 25 Jan and they confirmed to me on 7 Feb that "my old supplier" had received it. I've logged into the EE account a few times since then but there was no change.

When the switch was complete, Bulb's (standard template) email said how many weeks it should take for my final bill to arrive. The date was ages ago now, so I was growing concerned. After reading this thread and seeing that some people had been refunded, I decided to log in again, and, hey presto, my 25 Jan meter reading has now appeared in my EE account, along with an account "statement" dated the same day. It's not a bill and doesn't mention it's final. And it's backdated to 25 Jan but definitely only appeared recently. Nonetheless I'm going to treat it as my final bill and get in touch with OVO.

So, if anyone else has been waiting for a final bill, check your old account because they may have sneaked it in when you weren't looking.

As an aside, even though I've already received my cashback from the cheap energy club, it's still showing the switch as "in progress" so i can't do another comparison. What's the "OVO" switch doing for you?

My situation is very similar to yours. I also switched to Bulb just before EE finally collapsed. I eventually had my final bill from EE in early May and it was a disasterous mess of incorrect metre readings and haphazard calculations clearly messed up so that it looked like I owed them hundreds of pounds rather than the other way around.

OVO refused to discuss it so I went to back to EE and despite apparently having a 'reviewed account' on the managers desk where it's been for 2 months, if it was actually ever presented, I am still waiting for any sort of communication from EE.

I also wrote to the administrators at the same time and haven't heard anything from them. I am going to assume that they think if they don't reply then eventually I will just go away.