Bulb behaving fraudulently?

Punter2

This has always been a decent company in the past. 

With me at least they have tended to set high estimated figures for the Direct Debits which resulted in my account having  many hundreds of pounds of credit.

I telephoned them and got the direct debit monthly payment reduced and all worked fairly well. They also refunded the £500.00 odd credit.

They told me they couldn't match the monthly bill amount to a direct debit. So that I only paid for what I have used. That sounded very IT incompetent to me.

They recently sent me an email saying I was over £200.00 in arrears and that they were going to increase the amount they take. They were almost doubling the monthly payment amount. I telephoned Bulb to complain and it transpired I was £7.00 in credit. However they still wanted the increased payment to the doubled amount and the customer service worker said the was unable to reduce it by more than a very small amount. Not like before then.

Simply put the email seemed misleading and incorrect to the point of being fraudulent. It appeared to be a  scam to build up funds on the accounts which would be available to them meantime.

After I threatened them with the ombudsman they agreed that they would only take money with the direct debit for the amount of fuel used each month.

I think they should be taking payments only for fuel used anyway. They choose not to.

Brie

Many companies do this because you don't have a huge credit to cover the increase in costs (Bulb has put their rates up) or the increase in use normal for winter.  The system is you overpay in the summer and underpay in the winter.

But I quite get this - i'd rather the money be in my account rather than theirs and then top up when one of their increase notices come through.

Or it's time to move to another provider.

EssexHebridean

Oddly enough I have literally just posted about a broadly similar situation going back a few months on another thread on the board. 

Went through last winter in credit - on the few occasions towards the end of the winter it got a bit close to running out, I topped it up using my debit card. easy, and meant we could keep a lower DD which suited us. Suddenly in May they decided they wanted to more than double our DD - to am amount that would have been vastly in excess of our entire power use for the previous year - during which of course we had been at home a lot more due to lockdowns etc. Couldn't find ANY justification for this at all - and spoke with their customer service team who agreed it seemed too high but were unable to override the system by more than a couple of pounds. In the end we opted to stop the DD - we were over 3160 in credit at that stage, and by the time we left them several months later we were still in a position where there was over £70 credit to come back to us.

I checked the usage projections on their statements and the figures on those suggested the DD should be mid-way between where it had been, and where they wanted to put it - I would have accepted that even though it still would have been higher due to the likelihood of us both returning to our respective workplaces at least some of the time.

When I first joined Bulb I really liked the way they worked - that's changed a lot over the past year though, I suspect due to the now well-publicised cashflow issues they're having. 

Punter2

Hi Brie
Yes, I agree, they must assume that the customer wants build it up in the summer and uses the surplus to top up in the winter. All sort of budget friendly for those who struggle with variable bills.

However the Summer surplus was large and continued to build in the winter .
😆

[Deleted User]

Brie said:

Many companies do this because you don't have a huge credit to cover the increase in costs (Bulb has put their rates up) or the increase in use normal for winter.  The system is you overpay in the summer and underpay in the winter.

But I quite get this - i'd rather the money be in my account rather than theirs and then top up when one of their increase notices come through.

Or it's time to move to another provider.

Suppliers are required to pay their wholesalers in advance of supply. Why should they provide consumers with free energy for a month? This is why most suppliers now require a payment prior to the start of supply and an account balance which is sufficient to cover the following month’s estimated energy cost. This can become a problem when people switch suppliers in the latter part of the year.

If suppliers have to borrow to pay their wholesalers then the cost of this would be reflected in higher energy costs. Having said that, I accept that the whole business of credit balances is open to some abuse but many consumers do not help themselves by failing to provide regular meter readings.

BobT36

Dolor said:

Brie said:

Many companies do this because you don't have a huge credit to cover the increase in costs (Bulb has put their rates up) or the increase in use normal for winter.  The system is you overpay in the summer and underpay in the winter.

But I quite get this - i'd rather the money be in my account rather than theirs and then top up when one of their increase notices come through.

Or it's time to move to another provider.

Suppliers are required to pay their wholesalers in advance of supply. Why should they provide consumers with free energy for a month? This is why most suppliers now require a payment prior to the start of supply and an account balance which is sufficient to cover the following month’s estimated energy cost. This can become a problem when people switch suppliers in the latter part of the year.

If suppliers have to borrow to pay their wholesalers then the cost of this would be reflected in higher energy costs. Having said that, I accept that the whole business of credit balances is open to some abuse but many consumers do not help themselves by failing to provide regular meter readings.

Literally every shop or business that sells stuff (unless they're the "dropshipping" type has to pay for their stock upfront, then make the money back when they sell it. Why shouldn't energy companies? It's not like the energy is going to go to "waste".

Also if it's such a problem, charge the first month up-front like most do, job done. I refuse to overpay and have my money sat in their bank rather than mine. I'll happily pay what I use. I set my DDs around what I use in summer, then manually top-up in Winter. I remember Bulb's website being pretty decent at letting me set my own DD and Top-up whenever to clear any debit, when I was with them in the past. Unfortunately now a lot of suppliers are struggling and going the Avro way of surviving on customer advance payments and credit.

Since when am I a charity? I'm already paying for what I use and that includes cover for their business overheads. What they're doing with raising the DDs is essentially a hidden charge. 

I fully agree a company should be able to be a bit tighter with customers who fall into arrears and are too derp to manage their bills properly or provide regular meter readings, but companies have existing legal methods to deal with that, and that's their problem, not mine.

As with a lot of things in RipOffBritain, If you're not super vigilant you end up paying more to cover those who don't. 

booshya

BobT36 said:

Dolor said:

Brie said:

Many companies do this because you don't have a huge credit to cover the increase in costs (Bulb has put their rates up) or the increase in use normal for winter.  The system is you overpay in the summer and underpay in the winter.

But I quite get this - i'd rather the money be in my account rather than theirs and then top up when one of their increase notices come through.

Or it's time to move to another provider.

Suppliers are required to pay their wholesalers in advance of supply. Why should they provide consumers with free energy for a month? This is why most suppliers now require a payment prior to the start of supply and an account balance which is sufficient to cover the following month’s estimated energy cost. This can become a problem when people switch suppliers in the latter part of the year.

If suppliers have to borrow to pay their wholesalers then the cost of this would be reflected in higher energy costs. Having said that, I accept that the whole business of credit balances is open to some abuse but many consumers do not help themselves by failing to provide regular meter readings.

Literally every shop or business that sells stuff (unless they're the "dropshipping" type has to pay for their stock upfront, then make the money back when they sell it. ...

Literally, that is simply not correct.

e.g. Comet met a quick demise only when it's suppliers started demanding payment upfront as a result of the recession and loss of confidence, or rather the suppliers credit insurers loss of confidence, in Comet that the suppliers may not get paid unless they did..


New car dealerships typically do not pay for their stock until 3-6 months after delivery, by which time it is hoped/expected the dealership has offloaded that stock.

etc.

booshya

^^^ You think the big supermarkets pay their suppliers upfront? Think again.
120 day (4 month) payment terms often apply.

wiseonesomeofthetime

Brie said:

....  The system is you overpay in the summer and underpay in the winter.

....

That only works if you switch provider just before the summer.

Following the collapse of a load of companies, many are now only just joining a new provider and so, like me, may have minimal credit balance going into the winter months. 

I fully expect to have to top-up each winter month's DD in order to cover the bill.

I have no intention of having a DD that fully covers the winter months in its own right as I'd foresee issues, come spring, when I tried to get them to reduce the DD to a more appropriate level.

Plus I'll be looking around the market in April too.

[Deleted User]

Why are people so worried about credit balances when they are 100% protected by the Ofgem Consumer Levy? Choose a supplier like Octopus and the monthly DD amount can be changed in the App or online subject, I believe, to there being enough credit to cover the next month’s expected costs. 

GingerTim

wiseonesomeofthetime said:

Brie said:

....  The system is you overpay in the summer and underpay in the winter.

....

That only works if you switch provider just before the summer.

Following the collapse of a load of companies, many are now only just joining a new provider and so, like me, may have minimal credit balance going into the winter months. 

I fully expect to have to top-up each winter month's DD in order to cover the bill.

I have no intention of having a DD that fully covers the winter months in its own right as I'd foresee issues, come spring, when I tried to get them to reduce the DD to a more appropriate level.

Plus I'll be looking around the market in April too.

That presumes there will be anything approaching a 'market' in April - I'm not so confident there will be.