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

coupleuk

MWT said:

Scot_39 said:

I for one have no faith in Ofgem protecting other bill payers not benefitting from TE low rates.  After we all had to fork out c£100 for past failures - not just those benefitting from the low rates.

in this case I'd be more concerned about the level of unpaid wholesale and distribution costs than about the costs related to individual customers as there will be virtually no account balances to protect as customers were on variable direct debits, so no build up of a balance for the most part..

So it will not have a zero impact on the rest of us, but I'd hope a lower impact than we have seen in the past...

I'm willing to bet that as many as 1/3rd of Tomato customers have NEVER been billed and owe many many months of consumption. Many more are receiving delayed bills.

Clearly, Tomato wouldn't have a cashflow issue if they could work out how to collect money.

They've had nothing off me since I joined September 1st - so thats over £2,000 from 2 accounts.

And the reason they haven't billed, are late billing and are probably owed £millions is because they haven't a clue what they're doing !!!

Newbie_John

The Sun reported they have about 10k customers.
If a third hasn't been billed that's 3000. 
They haven't been around for a year yet so let's assume 6 months average.
Average UK bill is £80/month.
3000 * 6 * 80 = 1.4mln.
Still a lot but we can see people getting their bills in this thread - so they're improving.

There's OFGEM that controls it, there's a lot of customers that keep fingers crossed for them to make it and there is the same 10 people that once every two weeks for the past 6 months complain and wish ASAP closure.. 
They shut down, we move on.
They survived and 90% of this thread is spam.

MWT

Newbie_John said:

The Sun reported they have about 10k customers.

That is just the domestic accounts, there are a lot of business customers as well, the most recent filed accounts reported £64m revenue, that didn't come from 10k customers.

Those same accounts showed over £11m uncollected debts, and a further £5m on loan to one of their other companies.

That is going to put quite a dent in their cash-flow...

Nobody objects to a well managed new company shaking things up a bit, Octopus was a start-up only a few years ago and look where they are now...

Tomato does not seem to have the same quality of management and is suffering as a result.

If they can recall the loan from their Northern Gas Heating company (unlikely perhaps as it was all invested in stock from the looks of their last accounts) and reduce the debtors they can probably get back on track.

This story doesn't have to be over yet, but it is going to take more than glib comments from the CEO to do it... 

GingerTim

Newbie_John said:

Still a lot but we can see people getting their bills in this thread - so they're improving.

Except the Elexon notice on Friday says Tomato is literally doing the opposite of improving.

Some anecdotal data from the Tomato Facebook group - I think this is an element of one of @masonic's 'bad' scenarios...

QrizB

Newbie_John said:

They haven't been around for a year yet ..

At least two years as Tomato. See:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6437911/single-rate-electricity-meter-with-dual-rate-tariff

Newbie_John said:

Still a lot but we can see people getting their bills in this thread - so they're improving.

As above, Elexon disagree with the "improving".

An energy company does two core things; buys energy on the wholesale market and resells it on the retail market. Tomato (which is supposedly developing a backend suite that they can market, akin to Kraken) doesn't seem to be able to do either of those to an acceptable standard.

Meanwhile they've got a CEO who seems to think he's a techbro pumping a crypto or AI startup, not a sober businessman running a regulated utility.

jadex

MWT said:

Newbie_John said:

The Sun reported they have about 10k customers.

Octopus was a start-up only a few years ago and look where they are now...

Tomato does not seem to have the same quality of management and is suffering as a result.

And not the same quality of connections and political influence as Octopus.

GingerTim

Eyes down, pop pickers, for a new entry at no. 2 - and it's a real no. 2 - it's 'We March On' by Tomato Energy.

https://youtu.be/RR-IqXsJLi8?si=b3mc-IfUNQDlm_IS

(I think I cringed myself into the size of a walnut watching this)

tlcgrantham

I’m sure the late Alan Freeman would agree!

WiserMiser

Seems they used the infamous Jaguar ad to train their American AI.

Newbie_John

There's been some new nice additions to the June bill, like average unit rate: