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

masonic

MuckChucker said:

Left Tomato in May. Final bill just arrived. All billing was fine up until we left. What a joke shop of an operation. . .savings were nice though.

Did your final bill contain any Guaranteed Standard of Performance compensation?

Gobsh

Is everyone jumping out of Tomato? Why?

EssexHebridean

Gobsh said:

Is everyone jumping out of Tomato? Why?

Read back on the thread - their days would appear to be numbered, and a lot of folk will prefer to make their own way out to a supplier and tariff of their choosing, rather than take their chances on the SOLR (Supplier of Last Resort) process as and when that occurs. 

Dra60nfly

Sadly, despite no issues with billing, I also started the process to jump ship at the weekend (I'd rather be in control of a move rather than be transferred to SOLR). Good Energy seems to be the best option for me with 2 EV's. Will be interesting to see if TE get funding and are allowed to continue trading

JohnPo

I have looked into options and checked how quickly a switch could happen - 2 working days with Octopus / EON - the ones I checked. I also did some digging around as what happened with Rebel Energy (the last supplier to go bump) - Ofgem announced on 1/4/25 that they ceased trading and that they would appoint a SOLR, BG were appointed on the 6/4 with a press release on 7/4.  I think there will be enough time to escape even if waiting till the very end. 

northernsparky

7JohnPo said:

I have looked into options and checked how quickly a switch could happen - 2 working days with Octopus / EON - the ones I checked. I also did some digging around as what happened with Rebel Energy (the last supplier to go bump) - Ofgem announced on 1/4/25 that they ceased trading and that they would appoint a SOLR, BG were appointed on the 6/4 with a press release on 7/4.  I think there will be enough time to escape even if waiting till the very end. 

You might have left it too long 

Tomato Energy 'could collapse into administration' - Submitting a notice of intent to appoint an administrator can indicate a company has merely 10 days to resolve its difficulties before collapsing. The Sun claims that Tomato Energy submitted the notice nine days ago.

masonic

JohnPo said:

I have looked into options and checked how quickly a switch could happen - 2 working days with Octopus / EON - the ones I checked. I also did some digging around as what happened with Rebel Energy (the last supplier to go bump) - Ofgem announced on 1/4/25 that they ceased trading and that they would appoint a SOLR, BG were appointed on the 6/4 with a press release on 7/4.  I think there will be enough time to escape even if waiting till the very end. 

Maybe enough time to escape, but if the switch happens after they cease trading then you may end up in the list of meter points switched to the SOLR. In the past SOLR would make several attempts to gain control of those meter points.

bagand96

JohnPo said:

I have looked into options and checked how quickly a switch could happen - 2 working days with Octopus / EON - the ones I checked. I also did some digging around as what happened with Rebel Energy (the last supplier to go bump) - Ofgem announced on 1/4/25 that they ceased trading and that they would appoint a SOLR, BG were appointed on the 6/4 with a press release on 7/4.  I think there will be enough time to escape even if waiting till the very end. 

Switched out of Tomato last week to Fuse who already had my Gas. Took 2 working days, no problems. Yet to receive a final bill from Tomato but I'm not too worried, even if it's 17 days that ended up being billed at flat rate.

I think you could probably beat the SoLR process with the fast switches now. Back when there was a a raft of failures there were people on these forums that beat SoLR, and that was before the 3 day switching. 

WiserMiser

bagand96 said:

JohnPo said:

I have looked into options and checked how quickly a switch could happen - 2 working days with Octopus / EON - the ones I checked. I also did some digging around as what happened with Rebel Energy (the last supplier to go bump) - Ofgem announced on 1/4/25 that they ceased trading and that they would appoint a SOLR, BG were appointed on the 6/4 with a press release on 7/4.  I think there will be enough time to escape even if waiting till the very end. 

I think you could probably beat the SoLR process with the fast switches now. Back when there was a a raft of failures there were people on these forums that beat SoLR, and that was before the 3 day switching. 

Yes, I've done that successfully when it took much longer, 17 days or whatever.  It made sense because I've always paid by Variable Monthly Direct Debit so I wouldn't have been out of pocket if anything had gone wrong.

However, there may be a few differences if Tomato fails.

• Traditionally, Ofgem always worked slowly and bureaucratically.  When a company announced it had ceased trading, it usually took Ofgem the better part of a week to appoint the SoLR.  However, Ofgem were rightly hammered following the collapse of about 30 suppliers, so they may have woken up a bit since then.

• Similarly, if Ofgem kill Tomato by pulling the plug (instead of finding out that they had ceased trading the previous week), they may already have the SoLR lined up and waiting in the wings.  You may well find that any attempt to escape from the SoLR will be blocked.

• Imagine you switch to Supplier X now but then find their customer service poor (BG, I'm looking at you), so you switch to Supplier Y in February.  If Tomato eventually fail in May you could have problems if their SoLR turns out to be Supplier Y.  The administrator gives them the list of Tomato customers (past and present), and Supplier Y then deletes all your bills and replaces them with a single 'correct' bill backdated to February so you end up paying twice for the Feb-May standing charges and kWh usage with Supplier X.

• There are relatively few big suppliers left, so the risk of the SoLR being BG is relatively high.

Chrysalis

So my £80 gone then.

Shows how inadequate the compensation scheme is.  If ofgem had a box for me to fill in on their site, I would have had my money months ago, instead TE were able to fend me of and now I wont get it.
Have already emailed MP to try and get her to push for changes on this in the future.
Which moron thought it was a good idea to have suppliers police the compensation scheme?