Bulb to be Nationalised?

MWT

macman said:

MWT said:

A little strange, but the article has been revised in the last few mins, the liabilities are now lower...

Must have a good accountancy team there, if they can suddenly revise their liabilities down by some £400m!

I would suspect journalistic enthusiasm over accuracy at the root rather than accountants in this case.

wittynamegoeshere

dbks said:

MWT said:

A little strange, but the article has been revised in the last few mins, the liabilities are now lower...

So if each of Bulb's customers were to be billed approx. £300, that would cover all Bulb's debts.

Customers could fund that one off payment in part or in full from their £50 referrers/referral credit they received (oftem much more)

I don't see why we, the taxpayer, should pick up the bill for this inevitable fallen pyramid scheme.

Although I share your sentiment, it would not be legally possible.  Ofgem has guaranteed everyone's money unconditionally.

Bulb was definitely a pyramid scheme, I was briefly their customer and did get into a bit of an argie-bargie on their forum with someone who admitted to signing up friends and family while knowing that this was not the best deal for them, just to get those £50s.

savers_united

Ofgem in their upcoming review of the cap have mentioned looking into the financial position of new entrants to the market. 
I also agree with comments that it's not fair that we all have to start picking up this cost on our bills for failed suppliers, credit with a failed supplier like shopping vouchers and gift cards with failed high Street stores get voided. The best a customer can do is keep on top of their credit & Ofgem ensure the suppliers do not hold excess amounts. As a compromise maybe they could protect the first £100 but after that your on your own.

And maybe in future it will make consumers think twice before opting for lesser known providers. (Albeit Bulb are more established then most of them who have already failed.)

Sea_Shell

savers_united said:

Ofgem in their upcoming review of the cap have mentioned looking into the financial position of new entrants to the market. 
I also agree with comments that it's not fair that we all have to start picking up this cost on our bills for failed suppliers, credit with a failed supplier like shopping vouchers and gift cards with failed high Street stores get voided. The best a customer can do is keep on top of their credit & Ofgem ensure the suppliers do not hold excess amounts. As a compromise maybe they could protect the first £100 but after that your on your own.

And maybe in future it will make consumers think twice before opting for lesser known providers. (Albeit Bulb are more established then most of them who have already failed.)

I agree.   A cap on protected balance, with more emphasis on the consumer taking charge of their usage/balance and be able to manage it more actively.

For too many, energy has been thought of as "fire and forget".  

Like you say £200 of store vouchers would be lost...why is paying for energy up front so different? 

bagand96

If the railways are anything to go by then if Bulb are nationalised we can expect to see them be one of the best run energy suppliers with decent customer service satisfaction and marginal profitability.

wittynamegoeshere

Either there's a regulator with proper powers and proactivity who ensures that all companies are secure or we just have a state-run energy supplier.

You can't expect everyone and their granny to perform an in-depth analysis of a company's balance sheet before switching to them.

Many end up with big credit balances through no fault of their own.  In my case I couldn't stop Symbio taking around £350 extra from me as they were not answering the phone and ignoring emails, and the ombusdman doesn't want to know until they've ignored you for a month.  I only stopped them from taking another £150 by cancelling the direct debit, but doing this was against Eon's and Ofgem's advice.

Sea_Shell

Deleted_User said:

Sea_Shell said:

I agree.   A cap on protected balance, with more emphasis on the consumer taking charge of their usage/balance and be able to manage it more actively.

For too many, energy has been thought of as "fire and forget".  

Like you say £200 of store vouchers would be lost...why is paying for energy up front so different? 

Because you actively choose to buy store vouchers, but have to pay for energy by DD (or pay significantly higher prices), and then you don't control the amount of the DD, and many energy companies insist on setting (or raising) it too high, and/or are very very reluctant to repay excessive credit balances.

Ofgem are proposing to require repayment of excessive credit balances, which IMHO is a more sensible reform (though, as I've said before, my preference is not to reform the current system, but to get rid of it). Customer balances are only part of the costs of SoLRs, anyway.

That's why I said it would need to be with the customer having more active management of their accounts, and suppliers allowing (actively encouraging) such flexibility.

Surely any reform could incorporate that in some way?

wittynamegoeshere

I doubt that any sensible politician is going to be the one who reduces consumer protection, especially as doing so would be because the system has failed.

It needs a blank sheet, start again approach.  But I doubt that putting consumers at risk of losing their money would be a popular way of attempting to control the market.  In fact it could cause volatility, just start a rumour that supplier X is struggling, start the exodus of customers, drive them into bankruptcy.

Marvel1

Left these recently 3 weeks ago as they were the cheapest for me.

I do like the statements they sent showing my opening and closing meter readings with them, now I have much better estimate when shopping around.

savers_united

Deleted_User said:

Sea_Shell said:

I agree.   A cap on protected balance, with more emphasis on the consumer taking charge of their usage/balance and be able to manage it more actively.

For too many, energy has been thought of as "fire and forget".  

Like you say £200 of store vouchers would be lost...why is paying for energy up front so different? 

Because you actively choose to buy store vouchers, but have to pay for energy by DD (or pay significantly higher prices), and then you don't control the amount of the DD, and many energy companies insist on setting (or raising) it too high, and/or are very very reluctant to repay excessive credit balances.

Ofgem are proposing to require repayment of excessive credit balances, which IMHO is a more sensible reform (though, as I've said before, my preference is not to reform the current system, but to get rid of it). Customer balances are only part of the costs of SoLRs, anyway.

I did say that Ofgem also need to ensure that excess credit is not being held by providers, say no more than 10% of annual bill or £100. It would be fairly easy for providers to set up scripts to keep an eye of customer credit, quarterly or 6 monthly account reviews. Then on top of that customers who request refunds should be guaranteed refunds in x number of days provided they are in credit.

There are ways provided there is appetite to bring in these changes, but it can't go on that if a company fails then all customers have to pay for the fallout,not only that we end up paying for the collapse of a supplier that we may never used, it's like if you shop in Tesco and Sainsburys goes under your weekly tesco shop increases in price due to the Sainsbury failure.

When you look at it that way it does seem a crazy model