Eversmart 12% interest

cathy_meunier

As a previous Eversmart customer on their family tariff, I put in a complaint to the Ombusdman about the credit that I was owed by Eversmart when they went bust. 
They had given the wrong information to Utilita.  The Ombudsman has recalculated my credit, but they say that they won't include the 12% interest, because although it was promised in the tariff, they cannot see any evidence that it was added to my account.
Has anyone else been told the same?
As the interest was annual, you would not expect it to be added until the end of the year.
Can they do this? 
The 12% interest is clearly stated in the tariff, so shouldn't have to honour this? 

UnclaimedEnergy

How many months did you have left on the 12 month contract? - if you had only paid for 10 months then you can't really expect them to add 12% interest on the remaining 2 months worth of credit.

With the SoLR, the supplier who takes over agrees to cover the credit values on customers accounts - they normally wouldn't agree to take on an extra 12% hit for interest if it wasn't already applied by the previous supplier.

At the end of the day, your tariff/contract/terms were with Eversmart - Utilita were looking to move all of those customers on to their 'deemed' or 'smart PPM' tariffs anyway, so would have been unlikely to honour the interest terms of existing tariffs.


Other ex-eversmart customers would be able to provide their experiences of it, but I would be suprised if anyone has obtained the 12% interest.

cathy_meunier

I had been on the contract for 10 months out of the 12.
I'm not expecting to get interest on the remaining 2 months, but I did expect to get the interest for the 10 months that Eversmart kept my money.
If it were a bank account paying interest, and I closed it before the end of the year, then I would get the appropriate amount of interest added when the final balance is calculated.  ... that is of course other than if I quit and the interest is only paid if you do the full term.  But in this case I didn't choose to quit. 

Talldave

Morally I think you have a valid point; contractually - you'd have to read the Ts & Cs.  But, most importantly, is the amount worth the blood pressure and aggro for a fight you may not win?

MWT

cathy_meunier said:

If it were a bank account paying interest, and I closed it before the end of the year, then I would get the appropriate amount of interest added when the final balance is calculated.  ... that is of course other than if I quit and the interest is only paid if you do the full term.  But in this case I didn't choose to quit.

Energy companies are not banks though, and this case is closer to what happens if the bank fails, not if you close the account.

In short though, the balance on your account is protected, things the failing provider promised to do at some point in the future are not protected.

If the interest had been credited to your balance monthly it would have been part of the balance total and would have been protected

You possibly have a claim against the failing provider (depending on the T&C's of the interest offer) but you can't get this sorted through the SoLR, and your failed provider will almost certainly have no assets to meet unsecured claims. 

UnclaimedEnergy

Best bet - check your T&C's 
When it was released it was reported "You also get 1% interest each month on this credit – after the supplier takes off your monthly use"

Therefore you should have already received most of the interest anyway if that's the case - you're looking at maybe around £2 now from the remaining 2 x 1%

cathy_meunier

Thanks for the advice.
The interest was shown in my account on the website but not on the bills.
I took a note of the interest amounts which were listed on my account under "interest".  But now I am unable to get into
the account so have no way of accessing this information!

MWT

cathy_meunier said:

Thanks for the advice.
The interest was shown in my account on the website but not on the bills.
I took a note of the interest amounts which were listed on my account under "interest".  But now I am unable to get into
the account so have no way of accessing this information!

Were the interest amounts included in your account balance each month, or was it just a record of what had been earned so far?

If it was not included in the balance it will not help.

cathy_meunier

the interest amounts were shown separately and were not included in the balance.  I guess the intention was to add the total interest in at the end of the year... the same as a bank would do

MWT

cathy_meunier said:

the interest amounts were shown separately and were not included in the balance.  I guess the intention was to add the total interest in at the end of the year... the same as a bank would do

The bank analogy doesn't serve you well here, if you have a bank account which pays interest annually you will not see it recorded in your account until it is paid, once a year.

If it is paid monthly it will be in your account each month.

In this case they showed you how much had been accrued but was not yet payable.

It is a useful guide to what you were due to receive at the end of the 12 months, but that is all, it wasn't in your balance yet as it wasn't due to be paid yet, so it isn't part of the balance protected and covered by the obligations of the SoLR.

It is an unsecured debt owed by the failed company to you (probably, could still be some wording in the T&C's that only make it payable if you are still their customer at the 12 month point) so you would have to pursue Eversmart for that...

 

Bendo

I'd forgotten all about that tariff and the dodgy maths they used to call it 12% interest. Matt Hancock maths at its best.