Utility Warehouse - shoddy account management. (edited title)

GingerTim

Is Franz Kafka the Utility Warehouse CEO? Commiserations dealing with this rabble.

EssexHebridean

Update:
The Ombudsman has ruled in our favour on pretty much every point. They have also awarded £100 compensation which I was surprised about as I had acknowledged in the original submission to them that at that stage I was aware that I'd suffered no actual financial loss, as such. 
We were particularly pleased that the Ombudsman voiced concerns about how hard to understand the bills are and also their way of dealing with VAT, plus that the issue of the manual payment had ben poorly handled. 

We have actually challenged the decision, as it appears that for reasons known best to them UW decided to not declare all the payments they received from us to the ombudsman, and also claimed that the £25 goodwill credit that they had previously given us had already been paid to us, when in fact it hasn't. I've also added some further information as currently UW are still holding back some of the amount that was due to us as a refund at the close of our service with them. The amount they told us was being sent to us at the end of August never materialised, and as such if they simply paid us what the Ombudsman has awarded they'd be giving us back our own money that was already due to us and not being penalised themselves at all! Cheeky tinkers - I did comment that whether they had deliberately left out the missing payment, or whether in fact their billing is so impenetrable that even THEY can't fathom it out is for the Ombudsman to decide!  

I did chase up the current complaint that is running a short while ago - essentially got back the usual blurb telling me it's still with their complaints team and they'd ask them to get in touch, and have heard nothing again since. No question in my mind they are just ignoring that one until they see what goes on with the Ombudsman thing. The exchange of emails including the one about the readings being out of range has also now been sent to the Ombudsman though so I rather suspect their time wasting ploy might not end as they would hope! 

Chesney18

We have not had any problems with UW, but maybe didn't get into any complex situation.  They fitted the whole house with LED lighting many years back, all good, and smart meters with monthly billing and DD payments based on actual usage.

What is strange ->>>  we were on a fixed price contract with UW - with unit prices falling half way between the current ofgem cap (£3,500) and current EPG (£2,500 government guarantee), assuming typical annual energy demand.  So we would need and get support of about £400/ year to hit the floor EPG costs.

UW has suggested we switch back to standard capped pricing!!  Then they will get £1000/year support from government (not £400).  I will pay the same prices still. And we will share the extra £600 rebate between us.  This sounds outrageous, but I guess it may be legal.

[Deleted User]

Chesney18 said:

UW has suggested we switch back to standard capped pricing!!  Then they will get £1000/year support from government (not £400).  I will pay the same prices still. And we will share the extra £600 rebate between us.  This sounds outrageous, but I guess it may be legal.

They won’t, you won’t, it’s not outrageous.

Suppliers have been told to submit their actual energy purchase costs as part of the scheme - what money they get from the government depends on how much they have actually had to spend.

There’a also a wholesale market tracking component to make sure that they don’t just go out and overspend for ‘free’.

EssexHebridean

Final  (hopefully!) update from me on this one - I received my apology from the CEO’s office with an assurance that they would “credit my compensation as ordered by the ombudsman to my energy account” - I’m afraid that got a slightly acerbic response pointing out that as I was no longer with them for supply, and had been for some months, I shouldn’t still HAVE an energy account with them… After a week, I got a further response telling me that they would pay it by BACS instead - and I’m waiting to see now if that happens. I do wonder though had I still been with them whether they would have credited the money “to my account” in the same way as the original manual payment - ie dumped it into their black-hole account, never to be seen again by the account holder! 

So ultimately the summary on this is that it’s not just me who feels that their billing processes in particular are pitifully poor and, more to the point, more than usually difficult to follow by the average consumer. That the investigating officer at the Ombudsman office also said he was struggling to follow what they’d done and how they’d done it said a lot to me - indeed he also said that they had one of the worst billing systems he’d come across for transparency. (This was underlined by the fact that the senior investigation officer who dealt with our appeal misunderstood a fundamental point on how a previous credit from them was applied (ie it wasn’t, in spite of UW claiming to the contrary) says it all really - these are not people who are unused to dealing with this sort of thing after all! My opinion remains unchanged - their systems are designed to be hard to understand and I believe that they will benefit financially as a result - they certainly would have done in our case.

StocktonFlyer

I don't think they are hard to understand, I mean I think I understand it, I just think it's wrong.

So far though it's been wrong in my favour (I think), so I have limped along with it. I am still ok with the actual service and price, if not the odd billing format.

EssexHebridean

It's bearable until you have a problem - and when you have a problem, because even the company themselves can't figure out what they've done, and how they've done it, it all comes crashing down like a house of cards. As for price, they're really no cheaper than any other now unless of course you're part of "the scheme" and making money out of others. (indeed - they would have been appreciably more expensive for us has we till been with them as there was never any chance at all that we would be paying their inflated prices for other services just to save pennies on energy!)

StocktonFlyer

I'm not in the scheme, and only have my energy with them, but it is still slightly cheaper for me than the alleged cap (although this may be down to regional differences of supply costs).

Gas 10.199p per unit + 26.664p per day SC
Electric 32.238p per unit + 48.398p per day SC
(North East England)

It's the application of VAT that still puzzles me. They seem to take it as 5% of your agreed monthly fixed DD, rather than the actual cost of the energy supplied, so dependent on where your fixed DD sits you may be under or overpaying.

But as you point out this isn't terribly clear, and I may have the wrong end of the stick. All I know is that they think I am more in credit than my own calculations seem to show. Theoretically it should all even up somewhere down the line.

EssexHebridean

That's exactly what they do with the vat - so rather than charging it on the service they are supplying, they remove it from your incoming payment - very odd, and even the Ombudsman official said he was scratching his head as to why they would choose to do that as it was "very irregular". Also it's worth taking on board that should you find yourself in a position later in the winter that you want to make extra manual payments to your energy account you're best not to as it will never actually find its way to your account - so the only way of paying extra is to ask them to increase your DD - and that of course will likely come with the attendant issue of then needing them to reduce it again when the extra you wanted to pay has been paid...