Is Bulb worth it? Bulb pays £1.8 million after overcharging customers

HamSoulo

Hello
I'm using Bulb as my energy provider, switched over 2 years ago with £50 referral bonus and so far no major stop signs, maybe a few hiccups.
I've read this on MSE:

Energy firm Bulb pays £1.8 million after overcharging customers and preventing switching
(...)About 11,400 customers were wrongly charged multiple standing charges between December 2017 and June 2020. These customers were overcharged by £699,000 in total. Bulb has since paid this back to the affected customers as well as an extra £675,000 in goodwill payments.(...)
See: www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2020/08/bulb-to-pay-p1-8-million-after-overcharging-customers-and-preven/

Bulb was overcharging customers by wrongly charging multiple standing charges. Apparently, Bulb contacted everyone affected, but then my mind wonders if "everyone" actually was contacted

• How would one go about checking?
• Should I reach out to them?
• They will end up saying "no" and that's it?
• How to dig deeper?

Worth mentioning a few hiccups, so far:

1. The "pay ahead" approach to payment - pay fixed amount, pay a month ahead, use energy for a month, get statement, cover it and pay again. Keeping £50-100 with Bulb doesn't make sense, might as well keep it in your own bank account.
   I was able to bypass it and now, the current statement is being paid by the current DD; this means I keep on getting reminders "your account is in credit and remaining amount will be debited in 2 weeks" but only until the DD clears
2. Changing the DD account or day means one payment may be skipped. Happened to me twice, on the plus side this made 1) possible, as I had enough money in there already to cover the skipped month. Make sure to make changes like that shortly after DD cleared.
3. Double debit - with skipped month (see 2)) or without enough money to cover your bill already in the bulb account, they will pull remaining £ after 2 or so weeks; I've trigger the payment manually (DD) from their website to clear it up quickly and Bulb ended up pulling the same amount second time; I've got the money back but it took some time for the 2nd DD to clear and come back - not good if you don't have enough spare £ in your bank account. 
4. Minimum DD amount (again, "pay ahead" - part 2) - Bulb calculates avg. annual amount and the website doesn't allow for going lower than that.
   I prefer to control it myself and update DD pre- and post-winter. Emailing Bulb's CS made it happen, the website keeps on complain that my DD is too low, will have to email them again to adjust, as the annual avg. estimate goes up with each month I keep DD lower.
   
5. Changing DD day will mess up the "submit meter" reminder; instead of getting it 3 days before the statement is generated (12th), I'm getting it 3 days before the DD is due (17th). Minor, unless you forget to submit your reading couple of times and the estimation is lower than accurate spend - may end up paying over the DD amount if not kept in check. I've tried to explain this couple of times and ended-up setting up a calendar reminder for myself, kept on getting the same generic explanation about payments and meter readings.

Back to the main question, then. Is Bulb worth it? And does Bulb owe me any amount?

MWT

The incorrect standing charges were for customers with 'restricted meters' . these tend to be for tariffs like Economy 10, Total Heating Total Control, ComfortPlus etc. so unless you have one of these you will not have been involved in the overcharging.

JJ_Egan

Worth it , use a comparison site to see current prices .

HamSoulo

MWT said:

The incorrect standing charges were for customers with 'restricted meters' . these tend to be for tariffs like Economy 10, Total Heating Total Control, ComfortPlus etc. so unless you have one of these you will not have been involved in the overcharging.

Thanks MWT, I'm on Economy 7, Vari-Fair.

MWT

HamSoulo said:

Thanks MWT, I'm on Economy 7, Vari-Fair.

Then I expect you just have one electricity meter and you will have been billed one standing charge so no change of the 'error' they made affecting you.

The affected people using the 'restricted' meters had more than one meter to deliver their more complex set of daily rates for multiple time periods but should still have only paid one standing charge.

Petriix

Bulb are far from the cheapest. The £50 bonus is no incentive to stick with them. You are overpaying so you should do a comparison and switch.

matelodave

As Petrix says, Bulb are not the cheapest by quite a long way - I'd pay well over £200 a year more if I went with them. Have a look around the comparison sites and see if you can do better.