Tomato Energy (Electric Only Supplier) - Too Good To Be True ?

TroubledTarts

Bendo said:

The other red flag is that whilst they eventually filed the accounts for Tomato,  the Senapt are now 3 months overdue.

Not sure that will tell anyone anything if it only takes accounts to Dec 2023. The big intake of customers and costs was surely 2024 onwards.

No one will now what happened in 2024 unless they survive another 10 months.

Newbie_John

They'll eventually file them.

Anyway, if they survive - we continue enjoying 5p, if they don't - we come back where we came from. 

As for now, all is the same.

GingerTim

Newbie_John said:

They'll eventually file them.

Anyway, if they survive - we continue enjoying 5p, if they don't - we come back where we came from. 

As for now, all is the same.

There is another risk if they do go bust and you are still with them - you will be moved to a supplier of last resort, almost certainly onto the standard variable tariff and be stuck on that for a while until the process is complete and you can switch away to another supplier. That might be alright for some, but if you are charging an EV or battery overnight and at cheaper periods etc then it could get expensive.

Of course that we're heading into summer lessens the risk for those with storage heaters - and it depends on who the potential SOLR would be.

lohr500

GingerTim said:

Newbie_John said:

They'll eventually file them.

Anyway, if they survive - we continue enjoying 5p, if they don't - we come back where we came from. 

As for now, all is the same.

There is another risk if they do go bust and you are still with them - you will be moved to a supplier of last resort, almost certainly onto the standard variable tariff and be stuck on that for a while until the process is complete and you can switch away to another supplier. That might be alright for some, but if you are charging an EV or battery overnight and at cheaper periods etc then it could get expensive.

Of course that we're heading into summer lessens the risk for those with storage heaters - and it depends on who the potential SOLR would be.

And in the event of TE collapsing, is there a risk of possible protracted discussions with the administrators on the value of the outstanding debt for electricity consumed whilst with TE, especially if the half hourly data is unavailable for whatever reason?

WibbleBaaaaaa

Newbie_John said:

They'll eventually file them.

Anyway, if they survive - we continue enjoying 5p, if they don't - we come back where we came from. 

As for now, all is the same.

Hopefuly they survive or else another pile of customers are up the creak and forced to have no altenative but to go back to one of the main utility cartels, and of course lost jobs in a time when any job is a lottery win for so many, but it is a sad state of affairs when competition in the UK energy market seems to have been made more difficult for newer companies, to the point where a company can possibly be forced to go down the toilet because of fines from failed switches, which seems like a dream come true made up by the main big established companies to keep the energy market under their control......and moreso when the only people affected by said rules are said company, its workers jobs and its customers, it is a ridiculous situation to be honest.

knight123

Just phoned them to see if there's any update on my switch and they said they're still having issues and the estimate for when it'll be sorted is between now and....6th April!

Still, reassuring to know that if you got your registration in before they closed them then they'll still switch you, whenever they get round to it.

If it gets towards the end of the month and it still hasn't happened I might be tempted just to lock on to Octopus' fixed before the price goes up though.

QrizB

WibbleBaaaaaa said:

Hopefuly they survive or else another pile of customers are up the creak and forced to have no altenative

Hopefully they will survive or else there will be another batch of SoLR costs to add to the standing charges.

WibbleBaaaaaa said:

... it is a sad state of affairs when competition in the UK energy market seems to have been made more difficult for newer companies

The UK's biggest energy company was founded less than a decade ago, and was still a minor supplier 5 years ago.

WibbleBaaaaaa said.

.   a company can possibly be forced to go down the toilet because of fines from failed switches . 

Having a working administration system is a low bar. They could have bought a Kraken licence and avoided all this.

Tomato however don't want to be an energy supplier; they want to supply their admin backend to other people. Their customers are also the beta testers for their software.

WibbleBaaaaaa said:

... whi ch seems like a dream come true made up by the main big established companies to keep the energy market under their control

The fine was introduced by Ofgem, despite objections from some of the energy companies. It's meant to discourage the sort of "move fast and break things" behaviours that Tomato has demonstrated.

See also my previous comment re. "big established companies".

Newbie_John

GingerTim said:
There is another risk if they do go bust and you are still with them - you will be moved to a supplier of last resort, almost certainly onto the standard variable tariff and be stuck on that for a while until the process is complete and you can switch away to another supplier. That might be alright for some, but if you are charging an EV or battery overnight and at cheaper periods etc then it could get expensive.

Of course that we're heading into summer lessens the risk for those with storage heaters - and it depends on who the potential SOLR would be.

I honestly think the SOLR issue is really exagerated here.
You can see here that the process is quite quick:
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/blog/how-youre-protected-when-energy-firms-collapse

Per average takes 3 days from company collapsing to being assigned to another provider - most of us came from Octopus and there is a chance we will be moved back there. 
The issues from 2021 were mostly due to - the number of companies going down one by one, and that they kept people balances. Not a single Electricity provider collapsed in 3 years (so OFGEM should be able to handle any new case quickly) and TE doesn't keep any money balances  - so it shoudl all go swiftly.

Also have a read on the thread about Outfox the Market electricity provider - it is so so similar to this one, it just lasts from 2022 - solr, solr, solr, be careful, should collpase soon, no new customers,.. and in 2025 they're still going on.

masonic

lohr500 said:

GingerTim said:

Newbie_John said:

They'll eventually file them.

Anyway, if they survive - we continue enjoying 5p, if they don't - we come back where we came from. 

As for now, all is the same.

There is another risk if they do go bust and you are still with them - you will be moved to a supplier of last resort, almost certainly onto the standard variable tariff and be stuck on that for a while until the process is complete and you can switch away to another supplier. That might be alright for some, but if you are charging an EV or battery overnight and at cheaper periods etc then it could get expensive.

Of course that we're heading into summer lessens the risk for those with storage heaters - and it depends on who the potential SOLR would be.

And in the event of TE collapsing, is there a risk of possible protracted discussions with the administrators on the value of the outstanding debt for electricity consumed whilst with TE, especially if the half hourly data is unavailable for whatever reason?

What tends to happen is SoLR buys the debt from the administrators for some number of pennies in the pound and they become responsible for final billing. It still does introduce some risk, especially given lack of meter readings being used/recorded.

masonic

knight123 said:

Just phoned them to see if there's any update on my switch and they said they're still having issues and the estimate for when it'll be sorted is between now and....6th April!

If you were able to phone and get through to someone, that's already a big CS improvement!