Bulb - worse than ever!

MrsBrush

More of a rant, so apologies in advance.

I inherited Bulb as my energy supplier when I moved house in October. They have been awful from the outset, and I am trapped with them as they went into administration before the 3 week window was up and the advice at the time was to not worry and stay put for the time being. 

Fast forward 6 months, and I have had several "discussions" with them over the level of my monthly direct debit, which rose significantly because they wanted me to build up a balance to "insulate" me from the higher price cap...  suffice to say, I moved to the "pay for what you use only" option, which is still payable by variable direct debit. This was a huge fight to get them to agree (even though they are supposed to), on the basis that I need to be protected from the price rises! 

So, first month of new variable payment, and monthly bill duly arrived last week - £145, significantly lower than the £290 they wanted me to pay on their monthly plan. As I am also in credit, the actual payment owed is £90, and the DD is due on the 18th April, as per their bill.

So, I was pretty surprised, and very fed up to receive an email this morning (10th April) telling me that my payment has been requested and had "bounced" - and they also want to add a £15 late payment fee to the account to boot. Not bad when they have requested it at least 8 days earlier than their own billing system is supposed to collect the payment! 

Needless to say, they have been sent a strongly worded email this afternoon, and I have threatened to charge them a £15 admin fee for putting me in a bad mood and messing up my Sunday!

Has anyone got any idea how long this special administration is supposed to last, as I thought it was going to be dealt with by now. It seems that all of the remaining suppliers are not accepting transfers from any companies that have gone - so there seems to pretty much be a monopoly of appalling customer service going on at Bulb at the moment (unsurprisingly!). I really want to know how quickly I can escape the clutches of this god-awful company!

Mstty

With 1.7mil customers no one can take them all so as far as I am aware they will continue to be propped up by taxpayers money.for some time.

They must still be regulated by Ofgem so start a complaints process with them.

I am not aware of a reason why you can't move from bulb but you may have to call other suppliers direct as it's not something you see on their websites anymore.

Gerry1

You can move to EDF's SVT but only if you phone them.  However, you may find they're merely 'different' rather than 'better'.

QrizB

Mstty said:

With 1.7mil customers no one can take them all so as far as I am aware they will continue to be proposed up by taxpayers money.

Even if nothing else happens, eventually Bulb will vanish; they're not taking on new customers but existing ones leave in dribs abd drabs for other suppliers.
But to lose all 1.7 million by natural wastage could take decades.

t0rt0ise

MrsBrush said:

More of a rant, so apologies in advance.

I inherited Bulb as my energy supplier when I moved house in October. They have been awful from the outset, and I am trapped with them as they went into administration before the 3 week window was up and the advice at the time was to not worry and stay put for the time being. 

Fast forward 6 months, and I have had several "discussions" with them over the level of my monthly direct debit, which rose significantly because they wanted me to build up a balance to "insulate" me from the higher price cap...  suffice to say, I moved to the "pay for what you use only" option, which is still payable by variable direct debit. This was a huge fight to get them to agree (even though they are supposed to), on the basis that I need to be protected from the price rises! 

So, first month of new variable payment, and monthly bill duly arrived last week - £145, significantly lower than the £290 they wanted me to pay on their monthly plan. As I am also in credit, the actual payment owed is £90, and the DD is due on the 18th April, as per their bill.

So, I was pretty surprised, and very fed up to receive an email this morning (10th April) telling me that my payment has been requested and had "bounced" - and they also want to add a £15 late payment fee to the account to boot. Not bad when they have requested it at least 8 days earlier than their own billing system is supposed to collect the payment! 

Needless to say, they have been sent a strongly worded email this afternoon, and I have threatened to charge them a £15 admin fee for putting me in a bad mood and messing up my Sunday!

Has anyone got any idea how long this special administration is supposed to last, as I thought it was going to be dealt with by now. It seems that all of the remaining suppliers are not accepting transfers from any companies that have gone - so there seems to pretty much be a monopoly of appalling customer service going on at Bulb at the moment (unsurprisingly!). I really want to know how quickly I can escape the clutches of this god-awful company!

I had that email last month too which was my first month of variable direct debit. I called them and they said it was an error, and they did actually take the correct amount on the right day. Their system really is not set up for the variable DD and they don't like us opting for it. I've been with British Gas and EDF and others.. they are all as bad as each other.

Ms_Brush

Today's email was to tell me to add a collection date into the DD instruction, which conveniently can only be done if you opt for monthly budgeting plan (no thanks!), and a useful reminder that i can pay my "default" amount online immediately...  or I can go to a pre-payment meter. 

As you say, Bulb is learly not set up for anything other than legalised extortion, and i am pretty sure that the others will be no better, even if you can transfer over. I had tried several different companies about 6 weeks ago  and all refused to take a transfer from Bulb or any of the other dead companies. I  agree though, several others have been terrible previously. Ovo was good at my last house, but they are not allowing transfers either and their customer service 

Proves to me that the energy market is broken completely and despite my being a capitalist,I firmly believe that energy should be a fair, single price for everyone, under a single operator.