Extra Energy customers still waiting for credit refunds five months after it stopped trading

Former_MSE_Naomi

Former Extra Energy customers are still waiting for their bill credit to be refunded almost five months after the firm stopped trading - and there's no set date for when they'll receive their refunds...

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'Extra Energy customers still waiting for credit refunds five months after it stopped trading'

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Maxwell007

Former Extra Energy customers are still waiting for their bill credit to be refunded for almost 3years, EE had tobe the Number One worst Energy Company ever. . .

PaschalFun

Loving all the spam now at the end of this article.

MSE wouldn't be the same without the spammers, would it?
And the spam seems all the more official when it is attached to a MSE report ... almost as if MSE endorses it all.

curriej99

I switched from Extra Energy on 2nd Nov 2018 to Eversmart Energy and at that point Extra Energy still owed me around £200 as my direct debit had been set too high. Shortly afterwards Extra Energy went bust, still owing me the money.

I've been on the phone to both PWC and Scottish Power about this and have been given my fair share of the runaround. At one point in late January of this year a bloke at Scottish Power (Extra Energy Dept 0800 074 0471) told me categorically that the affair was being settled and that PWC would pay the outstanding amount into my bank account by 15th February!
Needless to say, this was baloney and nothing of the sort ever happened, begging the question 'why did he tell me this?'

I find it rather amazing that this sort of thing can happen these days. What the hell is regulation for? Energy companies should not be allowed to be in a position of going bust owing customers money.

I've learned one thing from this, and that is to not allow an energy company to set a direct debit so high that we end up in massive credit with them. Of course, they argue that you use less energy in Summer, and so build up a 'pot' for use in Winter. Well, that won't wash anymore. I don't trust any of them. Rant over.

cheryl.g11

still waiting for £1070 refund nobody been in touch and unless they got final meter reading from bulb, who we had transferred to just before they went bump, they have nothing to work it out from.

Caddyman

cheryl.g11 wrote: »

still waiting for £1070 refund nobody been in touch and unless they got final meter reading from bulb, who we had transferred to just before they went bump, they have nothing to work it out from.

I don't want to come across as anyway churlish so please don't take any offence. I'm merely trying to establish and understand how it is you came to being over £1k in credit with your energy company?

I'm with a small energy supplier myself and I pay by monthly direct debit one month in advance. Over the winter months, my monthly dd covered my monthly gas/electric consumption within £2 or £3 of my actual energy useage, so I didn't fall into debit at all and my credit balance was low. For years, I've taken regular monthly meter readings and submitted them online and I log on to my online account monthly. Now that we're in the summer months, my energy consumption has decreased significantly because the heating is switched off. This has now put me £140 in actual refundable credit and for me, that in my head is the trigger point for a refund.

I'd have expected my energy company to automatically refund me an in credit balance of £100 or more, but seemingly there is no legislation in place to force energy companies to do this. Therefore, the only way to get that money back, is to ask for it, and this is exactly what I chose to do a week or so ago from writing this. My initial contact by email requesting a refund got no where, no response. I had to resend the email with a threat to make a formal complaint to the energy Ombudsman to trigger a reply. They have agreed to refund me my account balance, minus one month in advance payment, which is fair enough.

My whole point here is, it is absolutely vital for customers to submit monthly meter readings and check their account and then challenge large build ups of credit. After all, it's YOUR money, not theirs. It has become fairly obvious to me that it isn't at all in some supplier's interests to monitor their customers accounts and refund large amounts of credit. This leaves the onus on the consumer, and in lots of cases, the consumer either forgets to check their balance or the consumer is seemingly solvent enough that they're not actually bothered about being massively in credit. I have a family member who falls into the latter, a credit balance of £1k plus just wouldn't phase him and so he doesn't bother asking for the money.

For me, once my cheap fix has come to an end with the supplier I'm currently with, I'll be swapping back to a firmly established household name supplier. I will end up paying slightly more, but I'll finally get Smart meters (SMETs 2 hopefully!), something I'm more than happy to have installed if it saves me from having to continue to supply manual meter readings. For me, Smart meters aren't about saving money because I can't see any evidence at all that they do save consumers money. I want them because as consumers, we're all paying for them anyway, whether or not you have them fitted, because the cost is built in to every household's energy bills. So on that basis, I might as well have them fitted. Smart meters might be 'free' at the point of installation, but that's as 'free' as it gets.