Green reviews: add your feedback

GreenSupplierLtd

MrAirCon said:

The tariff in the compare site is INCORRECT, 
Chestnut is 12.424p and not 12.023p per kWh

Hi MrAirCon
The rates on our tariffs vary by region of the UK you are in, So it may be that they are quoting you on an incorrect area by accident. Whilst we don't control what data a third party site holds, please email me on steven@green.energy with your address along which site you were using and we can look into this and raise it with the appropriate contacts to ensure all tariff information is held correctly for all of our members and anyone looking to join Green.
Thanks
Steven

Wideawake10

Switch went smoothly, excellent user friendly app. Online chat a bit awkward (slow connection) but got info I needed. So far, so good.

Streaky_Bacon

Just wondering if anybody has had experience with Green and Smart Meters.

Specifically, while I don't mind suppliers trying to persuade me to take a smart meter, I don't want to be harassed to do so, or have them try to force me.

So, I'm just wondering if anybody here has had any issues with pressure to install one.

GreenSupplierLtd

Streaky_Bacon said:

Just wondering if anybody has had experience with Green and Smart Meters.

Specifically, while I don't mind suppliers trying to persuade me to take a smart meter, I don't want to be harassed to do so, or have them try to force me.

So, I'm just wondering if anybody here has had any issues with pressure to install one.

Hi Steaky_Bacon, 
We will never harass or force our members to have a smart meter, we will however offer them to all of our members when we have engineers in their area as we progress our smart rollout. 
At Green, we firmly believe in the benefits of smart meters to both customers and the UK energy sector as a whole but we are fully aware that some people may not want one. 
In the future though, much like when they stopped making filament light bulbs, there are just not that many "traditional" meters to go around, so if your meter breaks it is highly likely to be replaced with a smart meter.
Thanks 
Steven

Coco20

I found this thread having stumbled across Green.Energy on Uswitch while looking to review my current tariff with my current provider.  I have previously always used the "main" providers, and have read about the issues that the various new entrants have had over the last few years.
So, while I would consider a supplier such as this, I would naturally dig a little deeper first.  As a result of a tour of their website and this thread, I have some observations:

It's clearly a fairly small team of people.  This is not necessarily a good or bad thing, but often it makes it difficult to scale up, as the temptation is not to spend what would otherwise be profit on effectively speculative additional resource (based on my experience of small businesses).

The website is very shiny.  Again, not a criticism at all, but there's a photo of 2 people sitting at desks of Apple computers, the type used by marketing departments, not customer services, accounts, or even technical support departments (and THOSE are the departments that I expect to interact with as a customer).  That gives the impression, to me personally, of style over content.  

Then there's the Smart meter rollout, as flagged on another blog (and mentioned earlier in this thread).  Much fanfare on now having an installation partner in July and plans to onboard customers with existing meters.  Three months later in October, there's no suggestion that either anyone has had a Smart meter actually installed, or, crucially, that the "behind the scenes work to enable existing smart meters" has been completed - this latter should hardly be a surprise task, and yet 18 months after launch it's still being worked on.  SMETS is (presumably) a standard. so writing an extract from the API should be a relatively simple task - especially if you can hire someone that worked at one of the main suppliers that already integrate.  So that's a concern for me.

The attempt to raise funds by crowdfunding had an interesting outcome.  One person spent £300k on (presumably) 1.35% of the company.  Nothing wrong with that, although it intrigues me that they felt the need to go to a site that leads to multiple small investors when they could clearly attract the more convenient single investor - but presumably couldn't locate them.

The crowdfunding "prospectus" links to Companies House.  Very responsible.  Form there, we discover that there has been no accounts filed since the company came out of dormancy.  There's been changes in CoSec, Co Name (twice), location, and share distribution (owner's son/brother taking on a 5% stake, and based on the timing unrelated to the above investment).  In other words, lots of administration, no financial reporting.  I wait to see what the accounts due next month say.  Meanwhile, the owner has been incorporating further entities at the rate of about two per month this year.  Settled?  Stable?  Focussed?  Reliable?

Back to the crowdfunding.  The reason given for the investment was to expand into Business energy & Prepayment.  While I'm sure people are crying out for cheaper prepayment options, as a business that isn't delivering Smart meters to its first 40,000 early adopters is maybe not ready to spread its wings into new markets (much less 20 other companies)?

The above is not criticism.  It must be monumentally difficult to break into the energy "supply" market.  But, from a customer angle and as an objective observer, I'm seeing a marketing company that's currently pointed at Energy, and next month could be pointed at <insert industry here>

If the Green.energy team see this - I genuinely wish you success.  I'd even consider one of your current job vacancies but the commute would be a bit long (however infrequent!).  But on balance, I don't think I'm ready to be a customer.

GreenSupplierLtd

Coco20 said:

I found this thread having stumbled across Green.Energy on Uswitch while looking to review my current tariff with my current provider.  I have previously always used the "main" providers, and have read about the issues that the various new entrants have had over the last few years.
So, while I would consider a supplier such as this, I would naturally dig a little deeper first.  As a result of a tour of their website and this thread, I have some observations:

It's clearly a fairly small team of people.  This is not necessarily a good or bad thing, but often it makes it difficult to scale up, as the temptation is not to spend what would otherwise be profit on effectively speculative additional resource (based on my experience of small businesses).

The website is very shiny.  Again, not a criticism at all, but there's a photo of 2 people sitting at desks of Apple computers, the type used by marketing departments, not customer services, accounts, or even technical support departments (and THOSE are the departments that I expect to interact with as a customer).  That gives the impression, to me personally, of style over content.  

Then there's the Smart meter rollout, as flagged on another blog (and mentioned earlier in this thread).  Much fanfare on now having an installation partner in July and plans to onboard customers with existing meters.  Three months later in October, there's no suggestion that either anyone has had a Smart meter actually installed, or, crucially, that the "behind the scenes work to enable existing smart meters" has been completed - this latter should hardly be a surprise task, and yet 18 months after launch it's still being worked on.  SMETS is (presumably) a standard. so writing an extract from the API should be a relatively simple task - especially if you can hire someone that worked at one of the main suppliers that already integrate.  So that's a concern for me.

The attempt to raise funds by crowdfunding had an interesting outcome.  One person spent £300k on (presumably) 1.35% of the company.  Nothing wrong with that, although it intrigues me that they felt the need to go to a site that leads to multiple small investors when they could clearly attract the more convenient single investor - but presumably couldn't locate them.

The crowdfunding "prospectus" links to Companies House.  Very responsible.  Form there, we discover that there has been no accounts filed since the company came out of dormancy.  There's been changes in CoSec, Co Name (twice), location, and share distribution (owner's son/brother taking on a 5% stake, and based on the timing unrelated to the above investment).  In other words, lots of administration, no financial reporting.  I wait to see what the accounts due next month say.  Meanwhile, the owner has been incorporating further entities at the rate of about two per month this year.  Settled?  Stable?  Focussed?  Reliable?

Back to the crowdfunding.  The reason given for the investment was to expand into Business energy & Prepayment.  While I'm sure people are crying out for cheaper prepayment options, as a business that isn't delivering Smart meters to its first 40,000 early adopters is maybe not ready to spread its wings into new markets (much less 20 other companies)?

The above is not criticism.  It must be monumentally difficult to break into the energy "supply" market.  But, from a customer angle and as an objective observer, I'm seeing a marketing company that's currently pointed at Energy, and next month could be pointed at <insert industry here>

If the Green.energy team see this - I genuinely wish you success.  I'd even consider one of your current job vacancies but the commute would be a bit long (however infrequent!).  But on balance, I don't think I'm ready to be a customer.

Hi Coco20,

Thanks for your post and its definitely interesting food for thought, we are happy to answer your questions but would be interested to know your bias towards bigger providers when they have issues of their own that have been well documented with fines/remands with Ofgem?

Whilst we do have a smaller team than the Big6, the amount of redundancies a lot of the larger more established suppliers are making mean it’s clear they are overstaffed, NPower alone in the north east is making ~2,500 people redundant as they merge with Eon. Whilst anyone who starts a new company, no matter the industry, is expected to make a loss at first. Our breakeven point pre-Covid was projected at 24 months after launch and we are fully aware of the need to be there for our members.

Thanks for your kind words on our website, and whilst there is a photo of a couple members of the team working on Apple Computers, these are used by our Marketing and Development team as in common place due to their need for specific software. The post in question was about an update on Green during the Covid pandemic, and we actively encourage different departments not to needlessly mix where possible so the photo was taken showing the social distancing we had in place. We have photos of our customer service team using windows PC’s if you would like to share, these include the plastic screens we have installed to ensure Green’s offices remain safe for all of the Team at Green.

In regard to our smart meter rollout, Green is actively installing smart meters on our customers wall, starting with a specific focus group of Green employees and now expanding onto a batch of Green’s friendly members as we expand our rollout. Any member with a Second Generation Smart Meter (SMETS2) who joins Green will be able to have their meter automatically read when joining Green and this includes a vast number of First Generation Smart Meters (SMETS1), but we are waiting upon the DCC to enroll these so they can speak to any energy supplier like a SMETS2 meter. The big tranches still outstanding include Secure Meters (installed by Ovo/Boost, Utilita and Utility Warehouse) and Landis & Gyr Meters (installed by British Gas) but this is the same for any energy supplier you join. We are however very keen never to promise something and not deliver so while we are still ensuring the process is working smoothly for all of our members, we won’t make a big song or dance about it.

We chose to launch a crowdfunding round due to the great response we had from our members, but discussions were already occurring in the background with someone who reached out to us and wanted to invest and help Green grow. Holding a further crowdfunding round in the future is certainly something we are thinking about as a way for our members to become part of helping shape Green.

Green was launched by procuring a “Supplier in a box” called Virginia Energy, a standard process that many suppliers go down, that we subsequently changed to be called Green Energy Supply Limited, however to avoid any confusion with other supplier with similar names in the UK we changed the name to be Green Supplier Limited, a name we have kept for over 12 months now. Before Green’s launch we were a dormant company, and we only started trading in June 2019, making the accounts due in the next few weeks our first trading accounts. Our CEO and main shareholder, has been segmenting his own business interests into individual companies in the energy or property space, these are companies he has acquired over the years and he is splitting under their own banner with their own management teams. His full time focus has and will remain to be Green.

Every energy supplier has to offer prepayment as a payment offering at 50,000 customers, we chose to do this early, not just to tick a box but to do it right. We launched prepayment early, before we legislatively had to and launching into the SME business marketplace is the next logical step as our CEO’s main experience is in Business Energy. Due to the timing of our launch, we have been able to avoid a lot of the issues more established business energy suppliers have faced due to Covid lockdowns.

The entire senior management team at Green is focused on Green and helping it grow to be one of the largest and best energy suppliers in the UK. We are now at over 90,000 members, over doubling the amount of customers on board since the launch of our crowdfunding and have increased our staffing headcount by over 50. Showing our willingness to invest and make Green a success.

I would be very much interested to see what it would take for you to join Green? We are ranked 2nd on Citizens Advice energy supplier rankings for customer service, in the top 5 on Trustpilot for Energy Suppliers, some very competitive pricing, all our electricity is from renewable sources and have some of the lowest call waiting times in the UK whilst being open from 7am until 11pm, 7 days a week.

We feel our offering is one of the strongest out there (but we are a bit biased).

Regards

Steven

Coco20

Thanks for the thorough response, Steven, I'm conscious that some of my comments will have appeared petty to you, some were clearly uninformed, and there was certainly no expectation of you justifying corporate structures. 

I also didn't intend to defend the big 6, and am well aware that many of them have had issues.  I was merely contextualising my response.

The most interesting aspect of your response to me was the SMETS 2 capability, so thanks for that.

EdwardB

I moved to Green after a nightmare with Solarplicity, who sold me to Toto without permission, who created fake readings and ransomed my exit until I paid their fake fee, Toto then went bust while I was in process of moving to green.energy and I was actually moved to EDT for 8 days who proceeded to overcharge me on reading and rates.

I am now owed money by two company administrators and EDF have me as owing them money.

Once Toto finally released me there were no handover problems at Green, I do not like the the website really, the information is there but the layout would be better if laid out like a bank statement

So far Green seems to be a good supplier, their bills are not exactly the best laid out, far too many pages,

I would prefer it if they billed monthly in arrears, you have to provide the reading within a tight window or you get an estimated bill (which I hate).  There is an App you can use but my old phone does not work with that.

Green does accept email submission and it sends a helpful email asking you for the reading a few days before my due date.

The online chat was not great, the issue is that staff juggle too many customers concurrently, this is a common problem with online chat systems.

I find email is the best way to contact them, you always get a confirmation of receipt of email and also a confirmation of meter readings,

I have been VERY PLEASED not to be nagged about a smart meter or having my tariff requiring one, I will be dead from old age before I will have a smart meter.  I call this respecting my wishes.

I am not sure what this crowdfunding thing is all about, I followed the link but it was not clear, but I am happy they are trying to grow the business.

I like the UK call centre, I have had such bad experiences with offshore call centres through numerous suppliers.

Like any supplier you need to make sure your direct debit is enough to avoid nasty surprise bills or increases in Direct Debit, mine was increased by £2 rather than the huge increases you hear about (two on TrustpPilot withing last few says  saying a British Gas deal was an error and DD increased or just big increase in DD:
https://uk.trustpilot.com/reviews/5f98a48c5e693f06a0ff0c0d
https://uk.trustpilot.com/reviews/5fa29f0b5e693f06f8799aee

Obviously there is room for improvement as there is in any company but they seem to be doing a lot right.
They have lots of different tariffs named after trees,  I used Uswitch which has a filter that allows you to choose to get results for suppliers that do not pay commission to the site.

So overall I would recommend Green.Energy, especially if you are determined to pay as little as possible .

GreenSupplierLtd

EdwardB said:

I moved to Green after a nightmare with Solarplicity, who sold me to Toto without permission, who created fake readings and ransomed my exit until I paid their fake fee, Toto then went bust while I was in process of moving to green.energy and I was actually moved to EDT for 8 days who proceeded to overcharge me on reading and rates.

I am now owed money by two company administrators and EDF have me as owing them money.

Once Toto finally released me there were no handover problems at Green, I do not like the the website really, the information is there but the layout would be better if laid out like a bank statement

So far Green seems to be a good supplier, their bills are not exactly the best laid out, far too many pages,

I would prefer it if they billed monthly in arrears, you have to provide the reading within a tight window or you get an estimated bill (which I hate).  There is an App you can use but my old phone does not work with that.

Green does accept email submission and it sends a helpful email asking you for the reading a few days before my due date.

The online chat was not great, the issue is that staff juggle too many customers concurrently, this is a common problem with online chat systems.

I find email is the best way to contact them, you always get a confirmation of receipt of email and also a confirmation of meter readings,

I have been VERY PLEASED not to be nagged about a smart meter or having my tariff requiring one, I will be dead from old age before I will have a smart meter.  I call this respecting my wishes.

I am not sure what this crowdfunding thing is all about, I followed the link but it was not clear, but I am happy they are trying to grow the business.

I like the UK call centre, I have had such bad experiences with offshore call centres through numerous suppliers.

Like any supplier you need to make sure your direct debit is enough to avoid nasty surprise bills or increases in Direct Debit, mine was increased by £2 rather than the huge increases you hear about (two on TrustpPilot withing last few says  saying a British Gas deal was an error and DD increased or just big increase in DD:
https://uk.trustpilot.com/reviews/5f98a48c5e693f06a0ff0c0d
https://uk.trustpilot.com/reviews/5fa29f0b5e693f06f8799aee

Obviously there is room for improvement as there is in any company but they seem to be doing a lot right.
They have lots of different tariffs named after trees,  I used Uswitch which has a filter that allows you to choose to get results for suppliers that do not pay commission to the site.

So overall I would recommend Green.Energy, especially if you are determined to pay as little as possible .

Hello there EdwardB

Thank you for your post. 

Just to cover off a couple questions you have raised, we do monthly bills, the way this would work is we would bill on a set date each month and email for reads a couple of days in advance. If a customer submits their read a bit earlier or later than their bill date, they will see a few days usage estimated. But you would still see your actual read on the bill alongside the estimates.

There's some FAQs on the website with some of the common questions about our Crowdfunding. If you need any more clarification on this please do not hesitate to contact us  

As a growing company, sometimes we can be a little busy via our live chat service, however, as our customer number grows, so will the number of staff, so hopefully you will see a change with our live chat team going forward. You can contact our contact centre 7 days a week 7am to 11pm, and our live chat system is open 24/7. 

We have also changed how our bills look, now there are three pages, and overview, gas and electric. This has simplified the way the bill looks.  

I hope this helps, but if you need us do not hesitate to ask  

Thanks 

Neil 

Complaints Team Lead

worrywart_3

Hi green energy I’m wanting to Move to you but am an ex tonik customer I take it there is no warm front grant? Should I wait for my service to go over to Scottish power first ? I have a credit balance with tonik so want that back