Yorkshire energy ?

GunJack

finally,  there's movement on the gas supplier db, I'm finally showing as SP. Still can't confirm with SP Energy Networks for the leccy (they don't have an online lookup), but, still some progress...

uptdale

"

masonic said:

 SP's suggestion of ring-fencing is sensible, I have no idea why companies are permitted to use these balances to finance their business.

But that's the way it works in many industries - advance payments by consumers are used as working capital, and receive no special protection in an insolvency.  Think deposits for furniture purchases, advance payments for holidays, or even gift cards.  Some industries like energy have special arrangements to protect consumers, the travel industry has ATOL and ABTA, and payment by credit card gives consumers protection - all those arrangements do not change the status of the debt as unsecured claims in an insolvency.  They just pass the risk from the consumer to someone else.

For years there have been proposals to change the law, but so far governments have resisted the idea of putting consumers ahead of other parties like banks (and the tax man) who lose money in an insolvency.  Their argument is that it would increase the cost of capital.  Here's a summary of the issues:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06540/

Tranboy

Having crunched some numbers using the moneysupermarket.com energy comparison website which I prefer as it shows all the tariffs side by side , It works out at £360 yearly for the SP Energy exclusive , £295 for Neon reef and £290 for YE. If I'm charged the £30 leaving fee I'm still better off than staying with SP , about £30pm SP and £24pm Neon. Due to the unfavourable comments on Trust pilot,hours on hold and emails ignored, the absence in November of tariff info for Energy exclusive for SP and some cheaper deals disappearing I took a chance on switching early, if SP had taken over my account by early January my switch might not have completed until early February meaning two months on SP exclusive tariff. Having just looked on my YE account page I see that my meter readings have now dissappeared. Under Top up balance it lists Matthew Cowlishaw and Clare Boardman as appointed joint Administrators on 7th December.

masonic

uptdale said:

"

masonic said:

 SP's suggestion of ring-fencing is sensible, I have no idea why companies are permitted to use these balances to finance their business.

But that's the way it works in many industries - advance payments by consumers are used as working capital, and receive no special protection in an insolvency.  Think deposits for furniture purchases, advance payments for holidays, or even gift cards.  Some industries like energy have special arrangements to protect consumers, the travel industry has ATOL and ABTA, and payment by credit card gives consumers protection - all those arrangements do not change the status of the debt as unsecured claims in an insolvency.  They just pass the risk from the consumer to someone else.

For years there have been proposals to change the law, but so far governments have resisted the idea of putting consumers ahead of other parties like banks (and the tax man) who lose money in an insolvency.  Their argument is that it would increase the cost of capital.  Here's a summary of the issues:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06540/

The issue here is that energy firms are not really supposed to be using their customers as a line of interest free credit for their businesses. This allows unscrupulous providers that are at the point of failure to carry on operating while being technically insolvent, hiking people's direct debits to unreasonable levels in some cases. The industry is then left to clean up the mess they leave in their wake. Customers of the failing supplier do not lose out because their credit balances are protected, though all consumers will face higher costs as a result.

I'm not proposing changing the order of creditors in an insolvency. The model I'm thinking of is well established in the financial services industry: that is, set up a couple of sub-companies, the first serves as a service provider to the second company, it receives a service charge from the second company for the provision of customer services and the operation of individual customer accounts. The second company acts as a trustee, holding cash in a nominee account for the customers. The nominee account is used to receive customer payments, pay for energy and pay the service fee to the service provider. If the provider fails and a SoLR is appointed, the assets in the trustee company pass to the SoLR. This would not only save customers from a failing energy supplier spending all of their credit in a desperate attempt to keep going, it would also make the administrator's job simpler and less costly.

I'm not suggesting through any of this that YE has acted irresponsibly with credit balances it held, but it appears others such as Extra Energy have.

ewokuk

GunJack said:

finally,  there's movement on the gas supplier db, I'm finally showing as SP. Still can't confirm with SP Energy Networks for the leccy (they don't have an online lookup), but, still some progress...

Same here and my power was already saying SP so I am guessing the switch I put through last week to Avro now has a good chance of succeeding (they didn't come back to me with any issues but with the gas still saying Daisy last week, I thought it might fail, I was banking on it being changed over before Avro did anything and it looks like that is now the case).  Hopefully this also means my SP account will be set up shortly to enable me to get the refund I am owed from YE before I get switched away.  Avro also have no leaving penalty so I can switch again as soon as cheaper deals appear again.

masonic

ewokuk said:

GunJack said:

finally,  there's movement on the gas supplier db, I'm finally showing as SP. Still can't confirm with SP Energy Networks for the leccy (they don't have an online lookup), but, still some progress...

Same here and my power was already saying SP so I am guessing the switch I put through last week to Avro now has a good chance of succeeding (they didn't come back to me with any issues but with the gas still saying Daisy last week, I thought it might fail, I was banking on it being changed over before Avro did anything and it looks like that is now the case).  Hopefully this also means my SP account will be set up shortly to enable me to get the refund I am owed from YE before I get switched away.

Any refund of credit would come after SP issues its final bill to you, up to 6 weeks after your switch to Avro completes.

uptdale

masonic said:

uptdale said:

"

masonic said:

 SP's suggestion of ring-fencing is sensible, I have no idea why companies are permitted to use these balances to finance their business.

But that's the way it works in many industries - advance payments by consumers are used as working capital, and receive no special protection in an insolvency.  Think deposits for furniture purchases, advance payments for holidays, or even gift cards.  Some industries like energy have special arrangements to protect consumers, the travel industry has ATOL and ABTA, and payment by credit card gives consumers protection - all those arrangements do not change the status of the debt as unsecured claims in an insolvency.  They just pass the risk from the consumer to someone else.

For years there have been proposals to change the law, but so far governments have resisted the idea of putting consumers ahead of other parties like banks (and the tax man) who lose money in an insolvency.  Their argument is that it would increase the cost of capital.  Here's a summary of the issues:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06540/

The issue here is that energy firms are not really supposed to be using their customers as a line of interest free credit for their businesses. This allows unscrupulous providers that are at the point of failure to carry on operating while being technically insolvent, hiking people's direct debits to unreasonable levels in some cases. The industry is then left to clean up the mess they leave in their wake. Customers of the failing supplier do not lose out because their credit balances are protected, though all consumers will face higher costs as a result.

I'm not proposing changing the order of creditors in an insolvency. The model I'm thinking of is well established in the financial services industry: that is, set up a couple of sub-companies, the first serves as a service provider to the second company, it receives a service charge from the second company for the provision of customer services and the operation of individual customer accounts. The second company acts as a trustee, holding cash in a nominee account for the customers. The nominee account is used to receive customer payments, pay for energy and pay the service fee to the service provider. If the provider fails and a SoLR is appointed, the assets in the trustee company pass to the SoLR. This would not only save customers from a failing energy supplier spending all of their credit in a desperate attempt to keep going, it would also make the administrator's job simpler and less costly.

I'm not suggesting through any of this that YE has acted irresponsibly with credit balances it held, but it appears others such as Extra Energy have.

If there is no rule or law that says that a business must not use its customers as a line of interest free credit for its business, that's what it will do.  There are potential penalties if a business does that when it is knowingly insolvent, but that can be difficult to prove.

I agree that a model where customers' deposits are held in a trust account until the service is supplied would solve the problem, and would also remove the incentive for energy companies to allow large credit balances to build up.  But so far the idea has been resisted, and you can guess why.

masonic

uptdale said:

masonic said:

uptdale said:

"

masonic said:

 SP's suggestion of ring-fencing is sensible, I have no idea why companies are permitted to use these balances to finance their business.

But that's the way it works in many industries - advance payments by consumers are used as working capital, and receive no special protection in an insolvency.  Think deposits for furniture purchases, advance payments for holidays, or even gift cards.  Some industries like energy have special arrangements to protect consumers, the travel industry has ATOL and ABTA, and payment by credit card gives consumers protection - all those arrangements do not change the status of the debt as unsecured claims in an insolvency.  They just pass the risk from the consumer to someone else.

For years there have been proposals to change the law, but so far governments have resisted the idea of putting consumers ahead of other parties like banks (and the tax man) who lose money in an insolvency.  Their argument is that it would increase the cost of capital.  Here's a summary of the issues:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06540/

The issue here is that energy firms are not really supposed to be using their customers as a line of interest free credit for their businesses. This allows unscrupulous providers that are at the point of failure to carry on operating while being technically insolvent, hiking people's direct debits to unreasonable levels in some cases. The industry is then left to clean up the mess they leave in their wake. Customers of the failing supplier do not lose out because their credit balances are protected, though all consumers will face higher costs as a result.

I'm not proposing changing the order of creditors in an insolvency. The model I'm thinking of is well established in the financial services industry: that is, set up a couple of sub-companies, the first serves as a service provider to the second company, it receives a service charge from the second company for the provision of customer services and the operation of individual customer accounts. The second company acts as a trustee, holding cash in a nominee account for the customers. The nominee account is used to receive customer payments, pay for energy and pay the service fee to the service provider. If the provider fails and a SoLR is appointed, the assets in the trustee company pass to the SoLR. This would not only save customers from a failing energy supplier spending all of their credit in a desperate attempt to keep going, it would also make the administrator's job simpler and less costly.

I'm not suggesting through any of this that YE has acted irresponsibly with credit balances it held, but it appears others such as Extra Energy have.

If there is no rule or law that says that a business must not use its customers as a line of interest free credit for its business, that's what it will do.  There are potential penalties if a business does that when it is knowingly insolvent, but that can be difficult to prove.

I agree that a model where customers' deposits are held in a trust account until the service is supplied would solve the problem, and would also remove the incentive for energy companies to allow large credit balances to build up.  But so far the idea has been resisted, and you can guess why.

Agree on both points in your first paragraph.

It will be interesting to see what the fallout of the more recent supplier failures will be. I know Ofgem had put in place new measures to vet new entrants to the market, but I don't have a great deal of faith in that preventing further such failures. Once a sufficient proportion of households has had first-hand experience of this process, and word travels, the ensuing customer service burden from those wary of letting their credit build up, coupled with the costs suppliers see levied on them as a result of failed firms, could go some way to convincing suppliers a better mechanism to protect these credit balances is warranted.

Tharweb

DerwentMailman said:

BTW it would be helpful if folk can report on when they see the Gas supply registered on the national databases (in addition to the electric as some have already posted)

My gas supplier (Electric already showing) is showing as SP on database as from today.

Slinky

Well as I expected, the transfer back to Scottish Power (who were my last but 2 supplier), has resulted in them transposing my economy 7 meter readings.  I banged my head against a brick wall with them before about this, switched away to Ebico, they were worse than useless also, I had to take it to the ombudsman before the transposition was sorted. Everything was OK with Yorkshire Energy, but SP have screwed it up.

Given that we have gas central heating, and only use overnight electric to run the washing machine and dishwasher because it's cheap, I'd be quite happy paying nighttime rates during the day and switch back to running my machines in the day. Should I bother chasing them about it?

The previous owner had the E7 meters in. However I don't think they realised they were being billed incorrectly for years, as they seemed to be running their immersion heater on night time rates in the summer.