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

BillyHorner

Boohoo said:

GSV3MIAC2 said:

The real losers are the staff, most of whom were innocent, and customers / suppliers owed money (export customers who were never paid). 

Interesting 1st post.

Are you one of those people you have mentioned?

I think it's unarguable that people losing their jobs and small suppliers not being paid for goods/services provided will be much more impacted than the rest of us having to pay an extra penny or two on our standing charge.

wrf12345

The metering software failure totally undermined any chance they might have of being a low overhead company with competitive TOU tariffs - which raises the interesting question of how much it costs to buy/lease that software, presumably from a company that is not regulated by Ofgem and can be located in a low tax or zero tax jurisdiction with possible kickbacks to the directors (not Tomato as they have their own "software") who struggle with mere six figure salaries in Ofgem regulated companies? Same offshoring of profits with third world call centres (again, not Tomato), I suspect.

Even before Ofgem stopped them taking on new customers, I suspect forums like this one warned off many would-be customers.

bob2302

wrf12345 said:

Even before Ofgem stopped them taking on new customers, I suspect forums like this one warned off many would-be customers.

They warned them off unnecessarily. The risk was for investors and the industry as a whole.

QrizB

wrf12345 said:

Even before Ofgem stopped them taking on new customers, I suspect forums like this one warned off many would-be customers.

Tomato's growth stopped once they got big enough that Ofgem's lighter-touch regulation for micro suppliers no longer applied.

If they'd gained say 5k extra customers earlier, they'd have attracted Ofgem's attention sooner and we'd have reached this current situation more quickly.

masonic

BillyHorner said:

Boohoo said:

GSV3MIAC2 said:

The real losers are the staff, most of whom were innocent, and customers / suppliers owed money (export customers who were never paid). 

Interesting 1st post.

Are you one of those people you have mentioned?

I think it's unarguable that people losing their jobs and small suppliers not being paid for goods/services provided will be much more impacted than the rest of us having to pay an extra penny or two on our standing charge.

It raises an important point for all of us: know who you are working for. If a regulator or industry body is repeatedly calling out your employer for breaches and failures, or creditors resorting to legal action to get what they're owed, then it might just be time to polish up your CV. Even if it doesn't end this way, you could end up being their next victim.

wrf12345 said:

The metering software failure totally undermined any chance they might have of being a low overhead company with competitive TOU tariffs - which raises the interesting question of how much it costs to buy/lease that software, presumably from a company that is not regulated by Ofgem and can be located in a low tax or zero tax jurisdiction with possible kickbacks to the directors (not Tomato as they have their own "software") who struggle with mere six figure salaries in Ofgem regulated companies? Same offshoring of profits with third world call centres (again, not Tomato), I suspect.

In 2023, Tomato paid £5.7m in software expenses, presumably the majority of that going to parent company Senapt.

Bendo

Seems somewhat extortionate considering the software was broken and never fixed. Good luck to them trying to sell that to anyone else...

MeteredOut

Probably unsurprising to many, but Senapt and Tomato Energy share common directors.

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10508789/officers
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/09735768/officers

So even if Tomato go under, I'm sure the Senapt owners will have been well recompenses for their excellent record of software sales.

QrizB

Bendo said:

Seems somewhat extortionate considering the software was broken and never fixed.

That's something like £250-300 per customer, which does seem a lot when you consider that even for a well-run energy business the average annual profit per customer is much less than £100.

masonic

QrizB said:

Bendo said:

Seems somewhat extortionate considering the software was broken and never fixed.

That's something like £250-300 per customer, which does seem a lot when you consider that even for a well-run energy business the average annual profit per customer is much less than £100.

Makes you wonder if the money paid was for development costs that perhaps ought to have been spent by the parent company who now owns and is licencing it.

MeteredOut

masonic said:

QrizB said:

Bendo said:

Seems somewhat extortionate considering the software was broken and never fixed.

That's something like £250-300 per customer, which does seem a lot when you consider that even for a well-run energy business the average annual profit per customer is much less than £100.

Makes you wonder if the money paid was for development costs that perhaps ought to have been spent by the parent company who now owns and is licencing it.

Software companies can and do work on models where they have a piece of software with certain features, and if a client wants additional features, that client can pay for them to be added to the product, but the software company keeps the IP for said feature.

If the software company and client have the same owners, this can be a good way of protecting income of the loss making client...