Symbio Energy feedback

thelight

Just had my Ombudsman case decision this evening, which is that unsurprisingly Symbio do in fact owe me £60 compensation for a late bill, and £30 compensation and a written apology for bad customer service on top.

It seemed a pretty clear case to them and their explanation of the decision was very clear, going into a surpsising amount of detail about the various customer service issues highlighted in this case.

Will be very interesting to see whether Symbio accept the case or not as unlike the above poster, I haven't recieved any payment pre-empting the result.

Tafrock

I'm so surprised you are still a customer crispianne. I remember discussions with you about leaving over a year ago. I'm so glad I got out when I did. I now get both gas and electric from green and have no difficulty understanding my bills. Each month I know exactly what is bring taken from my account. Exactly how utility companies should operate . 

CRISPIANNE3

Tafrock said:

I'm so surprised you are still a customer crispianne. I remember discussions with you about leaving over a year ago. I'm so glad I got out when I did. I now get both gas and electric from green and have no difficulty understanding my bills. Each month I know exactly what is bring taken from my account. Exactly how utility companies should operate . 

Yes I remember many a sensible discussion with you and yes on reflection perhaps I should  have stood by my convictions and gone. However I was able to fix until March 22 at a rate of 10.024 per kw plus vat and standing charge about 19p per day.  They do reconcile each month but over estimate again. I know some well informed posters on here say about going  for a fix dd but I am concerned they may get confused. 

I can assure you Tafrock come March 22 I will not be staying with this company and look forward to dealing with a reputable one. 

rp1974

Here's an odd turn of events,got a phone call from Symbio around an hour ago offering to fit a smets2 latest generation smart meter,apparently a few cancellations in local area would mean they could fit one within 15 minutes if I wanted.
I declined the offer purely on the basis that I dont need one,if I had one I'd still be reading it monthly manually in any case,not getting into the tin foil hat wearing,grand conspiracy theorists territory,I just have no need for one.
Trying to explain this to Symbios caller was a bit of a challenge but got there in the end,as their doing this doesn't that suggest that their planning on continuing to operate instead of up the creek,or doesn't it have any bearing on that?.

niktheguru

rp1974 said:

Here's an odd turn of events,got a phone call from Symbio around an hour ago offering to fit a smets2 latest generation smart meter,apparently a few cancellations in local area would mean they could fit one within 15 minutes if I wanted.
I declined the offer purely on the basis that I dont need one,if I had one I'd still be reading it monthly manually in any case,not getting into the tin foil hat wearing,grand conspiracy theorists territory,I just have no need for one.
Trying to explain this to Symbios caller was a bit of a challenge but got there in the end,as their doing this doesn't that suggest that their planning on continuing to operate instead of up the creek,or doesn't it have any bearing on that?.

Very interesting. I'd be interested to see how they bill with a smart meter. I suspect they will still overinflate the next months "estimated usage", but just not need you to submit readings yourself to reconcile the actual months usage, so really there will be no change.

fewkeste

I would council against having a smart meter for the following reason; There have been discussions/concerns raised in The Treasurey that as more people move over to electric vehicles (cars) the tax take from duty and VAT on fuel for road vehicles will fall. They are looking at eventually taxing the electricity used to charge EVs since the smart home chargers plugged into EVs coupled with a smart meter at the premises can be used to record how many kWh of electricity have been used to charge the vehicle plugged into the home's electricity supply. You have been warned.

UnclaimedEnergy

fewkeste said:

I would council against having a smart meter for the following reason; There have been discussions/concerns raised in The Treasurey that as more people move over to electric vehicles (cars) the tax take from duty and VAT on fuel for road vehicles will fall. They are looking at eventually taxing the electricity used to charge EVs since the smart home chargers plugged into EVs coupled with a smart meter at the premises can be used to record how many kWh of electricity have been used to charge the vehicle plugged into the home's electricity supply. You have been warned.

You wouldn't even need a smart meter for what you're saying though, as without the smart home charger they are unable to distinguish what usage was EV and what was home. Based on what you've said, you can have a traditional meter with a smart home EV and still come into this issue. The smart meter isn't the deciding factor here.

There would probably be a lot of tax money lost when the majority of people have moved over to EVs. They would likely want to try and recover this money from somewhere, the alternative being to increase VAT on all utility bills or just sticking it into income tax.

fewkeste

The way round it would be to use one of the 'dumb' charging away from home leads that can often be purchased as an accessory for an EV. Though of course you wouldn't have the connectivity with the car functionality or being able to schedule charging times (to only charge during E7 hours for example.)  That way there could be no reporting of the kWh used for charging but it means manually starting and stopping charging rather than scheduling it via the inevitable app.

devondiver

niktheguru said:
 - so really there will be no change.

So will they continue to ignore the actual usage figures, as reported by numerous forum posters, in favour of their own outrageous interest-free-loan 'estimates'?

And, FWIW, Trustpilot seems to be taking a slightly harder line now viz: 

"Warning! We’ve detected misuse on this page

This company has been publishing public replies that are in breach of our guidelines. 

We strongly oppose any attempts to silence consumers’ freedom of speech. As a public, open, review platform we believe strongly in consumers having the ability to leave feedback - good or bad - about a business at any time, without interference. 

We have removed the business’ public replies that breach our guidelines and we'll continue to monitor this profile and take additional actions if needed."

But this hasn't stopped Symbio continuing to reply to TP posters with their standard threatening 'cut-and-paste' reply - the last batch all posted just '5 hours ago' at the time of this post.

rp1974

niktheguru said:
Very interesting. I'd be interested to see how they bill with a smart meter. I suspect they will still overinflate the next months "estimated usage", but just not need you to submit readings yourself to reconcile the actual months usage, so really there will be no change.

Exactly what I was thinking really,as fitting smart meters would seriously disrupt,if not end their "creative" accounting practices at a stroke,just seemed very peculiar and quite unexpected to be honest.
Thinking that they may have been given a prodding to do so,just very unlikely that they'd do it on a whim of their own volition as it's not in line with how they run their business.