Utility Warehouse - shoddy account management. (edited title)

EssexHebridean

Could anyone confirm whether there is a statutory requirement for an energy supplier to produce some form of statement for customers either annually, or if asked for it? 

TIA. 

MattMattMattUK

EssexHebridean said:

Could anyone confirm whether there is a statutory requirement for an energy supplier to produce some form of statement for customers either annually, or if asked for it? 

TIA. 

No statement requirement as far as I am aware (I have never had one), they are required to bill accurately and your bills should contain all the information you need. 

EssexHebridean

Thanks @MattMattMattUK - the latter part of that sentence may prove to be the relevant thing I think.. I've asked UW to provide me with a list of all payments  made to our account since it was opened last autumn - I currently have a manual payment that does not appear on a bill anywhere. I'd previously been assured that it had definitely been applied, but having tracked back the balances through all billing I can't see any point that shows its addition. I've asked again so we'll see what they come back with. 

EssexHebridean

Well I've heard back from UW again - somewhat implausibly they say:

We do not have the facility to pull this information. In these cases it will need to be a Subject Access Request (SAR).

I have requested this with our Privacy Team, who will address this request promptly within one month and send it to the email on the account.

I can't imagine for even a moment why they would be unable to provide a simple straightforward list of the payments that have been made to the account? Of course, if they really can't, it also begs the question as to how they previously told me that the payment I was querying had been applied... 

MattMattMattUK

EssexHebridean said:

Well I've heard back from UW again - somewhat implausibly they say:

We do not have the facility to pull this information. In these cases it will need to be a Subject Access Request (SAR).

I have requested this with our Privacy Team, who will address this request promptly within one month and send it to the email on the account.

I can't imagine for even a moment why they would be unable to provide a simple straightforward list of the payments that have been made to the account? Of course, if they really can't, it also begs the question as to how they previously told me that the payment I was querying had been applied... 

That does seem insane. Based on that response I would suspect that their accounts are a total mess, it will be interesting what the SAR contains and based on their previous replies if the SAR is even accurate. 

EssexHebridean

I've had a suspicion that their accounts are a total mess from pretty much the day we joined them...it is going to be very interesting to see if that proves to be true isn't it! 

EssexHebridean

Update to this - I now have my list of payments, and as I suspected a SAR was not necessary - nor would it have shown the payments anyway according to UW.  The list did include the manual payment. I've gone back to them and asked them to apply the manual payment to the account and ensure that it shows on the next bill as currently not only does it not show on any of our bills, but it has had no impact on the account balance at any stage, either! 

It definitely feels like they don't have the first clue what they're doing here though- three replies from three separate people so far, the first saying they don't provide statements and ignoring my request for a simple list of payments. The second talking about needing a SAR to get the detail of the payments, and the third confirming that a SAR wouldn't give that detail, and providing the list I had asked for originally. That, to me, either points to complete lack of organisation, or to the fact that they know manual payments aren't being applied to accounts, and are trying to "fog" the issue and hope people will go away... 

(I'm going to change the subject of the OP now to better reflect the matter at hand as I suspect this one might run on...) 

EssexHebridean

So I’ve now had confirmation that in spite of what we had been told previously, no, the manual payment had not been applied to our account, apparently when customers make BACS payments usually when they have a DD set up they also tell UW “how they want it used” - which seems utterly nonsensical to me. I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t have to tell them to apply it to our energy account, in order to stop them just sticking it in a holding account of their own and hoping we don’t notice! 🤦🏻‍♀️

The matter has now been escalated to a formal complaint - I’ve heard back from UW since doing so and they do seem a little more anxious to sort the situation out, albeit the only options I’ve been offered are either to refund the manual payment, or to use it in place of the next DD - whereas what we want is for them to simply apply it to the account so we are further in credit. 

They’ve offered a goodwill credit - which I have accepted, although on the basis that no, the complain is NOT resolved. I suspect the offer will be retracted again pretty fast once they read that bit! 

They have now been told that we want our previous questions answered, the credit applied to the account and the July bill to reflect that increased balance, and confirmation that any future manual payments will be applied straight to the account without delay. We’ll see what comes back on that. They have already been told that a failure to resolve the situation satisfactorily will lead to an Ombudsman complaint. 

In the meantime, anyone reading this who has made BACS payments to UW while also paying by DD, you should probably check if your money has actually found it’s way onto your account - it may well have not! And if you’re considering going over to UW, then I strongly suggest looking elsewhere - they are a flipping nightmare! 

EssexHebridean

This one continues to roll on. 

UW essentially ignore anything they don't want to deal with in EVERY bit of correspondence with them.

They initially escalated the matter to a formal complaint as I asked, but have continued to deal with it in their usual haphazard way where every contact is dealt with as a new matter being raised, and by someone different. 

A goodwill credit was offered (and accepted by us on the basis that we'd take it, and thank you, but no, the complaint is not going away any time yet), but I suspect it was on the basis of it being offered if we would go away and let them keep our missing money - nope, not happening - they've made no mention of it since. 

Immediately after acknowledging the complaint escalation and giving us a complaint reference, we received a further email saying "we've resolved your complaint" - this was within minutes of their response being sent and certainly before we had a chance to even see it, never mind reply/accept/refuse the resolution!

They offered to suspend our direct debit - not something we have asked for, or want. We replied and explained that no, that wasn't what was being asked for and that the DD should currently stay at the same level - and subsequently had a contact from them confirming that it would continue as usual and giving us our account balance - unsurprisingly this did not include either the goodwill credit OR the missing  manual payment. When we pointed that out, we got a further contact talking about our "new budget plan" and "new payment"... 

We have asked for them to issue us an immediate deadlock letter as although the complaint was only raised relatively recently allowing that they are refusing to even SEE anything that they don't wish to talk about there seems little point in us continuing to go round in circles for the next 7 weeks....it will probably surprise nobody to hear that they have simply ignored that request without making any reference to it whatsoever! 


Essentially the "TL:DR" on this is that yes, they know they have our money, but no thanks, they'll just hang onto it and not apply it to the account. Seemingly there's nothing wrong with that, and they seem somewhat bemused that we are unhappy with it... 

wild666

Your bank of credit card will have the records of the money paid and when it was paid to UW. I would issue them with a notice before action letter/email telling them they have so many days to credit your account with the money you paid them or it goes to the county court and upon winning the case you will instruct bailiffs to recover the money and any costs you incur.

EssexHebridean

Little point in threatening them with something they will be well aware that we're highly unlikely to go through with in the circumstances, to be honest. The thing with threats like that is that they are really only any use if they are believable - and for the amount involved this one would not be.

The issue here is not that they're denying having the money - it's that they seem to be struggling with the concept of adding it to our account so it is visible to us. Our suspicion is that they simply can't work out how to do it within their existing accounting system - being as that system as previously mentioned usually takes a payment made and immediately extracts the VAT portion from it, before showing the credit of it to the bill.

In the longer term I plan to switch to paying each bill by DD as it arrives, but I certainly don't want to confuse things further by raising that as an option right now, and even more not until they are willing to give us an account balance that actually shows everything we've paid!