Is this for real?

Pjpern

I saw this on Facebook. Is it real or made-up? I can't see the point of it if it is a scam but just wondered?

DO NOT refuse to pay your energy bill in October. Below is how you can make a stand and hurt your energy supplier without getting into debt/damaging your credit rating: 

1. Cancel your DD & pay for what you use each month.

2. You then need to write a letter of complaint to your energy supplier. Once that complaint had been raised, your energy supplier can't take any debt collection work on your account, so they can't pass your details to the credit reference agencies etc. That bill gets put on hold whilst they try to resolve your complaint. 

The energy company might offer you a small reduction - DON'T accept it. Keep the complaint open & hold strong. 

3. Eventually, they will send you a letter of 'Deadlock'. A letter of Deadlock is a letter that is sent to you from your energy company saying they gone as far as they can with your complaint & can't go any further, so your only option now is to take it up with the energy Ombudsman. 

For every complaint the Ombudsman receives, they charge your energy supplier £500 for every claim they have to investigate.

4. The energy companies also have limitations on how many complaints they're allowed open as well as a turnaround time of how fast they have to respond to a complaint & get a complaint closed. If they don't respond to them fast enough & don't resolve the complaints or they have too many complaints open, the energy firm will also get hit with a fine from the Ombudsman.

This is how your hurt an energy company. This will also put them in breach of their licensing conditions 

 & put their ability to trade at risk.

So if you want to fight these extortionate price hikes

1. Raise complaints

2. Do NOT close them

3. Take them to the Ombudsman

You can also submit a “subject access request” at the same time as the above. This means the energy company has a legal obligation to provide you with every piece of information they have on you; including telephone conversation transcripts, past bills, everything! This is time consuming for them to collect and is a huge hassle for them however they legally have only one month to comply.

Edit: the accompanying graphic contains a quote from Martin Lewis. This was taken from an article by Tyla. The written content of this post was taken from a commentator on the Tyla article. I thought others would find it useful so I made this post public.

[Deleted User]

Pjpern said:

I saw this on Facebook. Is it real or made-up?

If it's on Facebook, it's made up.

The only good bit of advice in there is not to refuse to pay. Everything after that is inaccurate and very poor advice. The Ombudsman won't charge a fee for spurious and vexatious complaints, which these would be as the complaint would effectively be 'I don't want to pay for my energy'.

GingerTim

It's a load of rubbish. Who do you think will end up paying for clogging up energy company helplines with spurious complaints? That's right, all of us.

molerat

I saw the post on FB and reported it.  It uses ML's photo and quote at the top as some sort of endorsement with that little disclaimer at the bottom of the text.

It gives both stupid and dangerous advice.  Cancel your DD and pay monthly which is likely to cost around 7% more which will be heading close to an extra £20 pm.

As above, clogging up the CS and ombudsman will only make things worse for those who are having real problems and of course the cost of all this will nonsense be passed on.

jimjames

It's nonsense and misses some crucial info. BUT you can switch to pay for what you use with many suppliers, if you cancel your DD you will pay higher rates than for DD billing. It also fails to warn that by switching to pay for use you will then be paying vastly more in winter than summer. Some people might be able to cope paying £30 in summer and £500 in January but many won't.

Alnat1

People can switch to paying by VARIABLE DD with most companies. This means you give a monthly meter reading, get a bill and around 14 days later the company will claim the total amount of the bill by DD. This stops the company holding a pot of your money and leaves your account at 0. It also means you only pay for what you use but still get the DD discount.

This will only work for people who can budget and afford to pay the huge winter bills in full and don't need the help of a FIXED DD (the one most have) that spreads the cost evenly over the year.

Shedman

"This will also put them in breach of their licensing conditions & put their ability to trade at risk."

What wonderful advice...not.  Just what everybody wants, more utility suppliers going bust.   

Pjpern

I thought it must be rubbish but wasn't sure about the ombudsman part of it 

Alnat1

Anything that raises the admin costs of the energy companies will eventually be passed on to customers.

The fools who write this rubbish are actually going to raise the price of their own bills if people follow their stupid ideas.

The only way to cut your energy bill is to use less energy!

SAC2334

Martin Lewis has publicly made it clear many times that he never endorses products and never lends his name to adverts. He has taken action against unregulated out of control internet platforms such as Twitter, Youtube  and Facebook  in the past 
I saw this same thing  a few weeks ago pop up on my Facebook and reported it to Facebook, who took no notice as usual. 
The sooner these wild west internet platforms are deemed "publishers " and responsible for what they show the better as it will transform them completely and cut down their profits. 
The OP is just showing another example of how easily people are fooled by Facebook adverts . every Facebook advert should be treated with extreme caution 

mark_cycling00

If you try and bankrupt UK energy companies, you're simply helping out the Russian regime who are well know for using social media to further their aims.

Try not to get fooled by the enemy...