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

Chrysalis

Qyburn said:

wrf12345 said:

"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." That is the whole point, energy retail profit is capped at three percent, moving money to unregulated (by Ofgem) companies mean they can keep within the cap whilst making lots of profit 

You misunderstand. Profits are not capped. Prices are capped to a level that means a properly run supplier should make 2 or 3% net profit. If a supplier is inefficient or hands out loads of cash to other companies, they can't just push their selling prices up above the cap to retain that percentage margin.

In any case the point about Tomato is that they aren't pushing their prices up.

Its higher than 3% in terms of potential as there is an additional margin added as well, and this only affects SVR, there is no cap on non SVR tariffs.  So many people think it applies to the entire supplier's revenue. 

Chrysalis

Bendo said:

Newbie_John said:

Totally disagree, that's what innovation is - sometimes it doesn't work out:
Windows Phones
Google Glasses
Metaverse
Etc.

You don't try, you don't win. 

I'm pretty sure if they haven't onboarded people who they couldn't bill the story would be very different. Over the winter period they had thousands of people who haven't paid a penny and that led to more and more debts.. the rest of the story we all know.

You disagree,  but you seem to be agreeing. The failure was purely down to the incompetence of the people running the company.  If they hadn't insisted on offering the cheapest energy around, with no margin to cover anything but basic overheads and hadn't on boarded customers direct to a ToU tariff without ensuring their systems could read those meters, then they wouldn't be where they are.

It is a simple case of incompetence at the top . 

I think its hard to draw a conclusion as wide as that as there is many contributing factors.

Cost per customer goes down as numbers grow, but that was prevented by the ban on sales.

Profit on energy charged for is hard to gouge, as they had a bunch of customers to subsidise who were making no revenue.

My own conclusion is I think the tariff offered was ok, but they should have limited the customers they onboarded, and had far more capital to allow cash flow.
Default onboard tariff should have been SVR until they are reliably getting data from meter.
Ofgem failed in that they only started caring when it was already too late, and even then failed to make anything other than a pending decision.
CEO failed in not having knowledge of the market it is in and how it works, and this drive to get customers as fast as possible when they were having such wide operating failures on the ones they already had.

Chrysalis

Bendo said:

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

Its a common game played, run a loss making venture (at least its loss making with the internal transactions), pay consultancy fee, software fee whatever it may be to parent company.  Then wind up the ltd company, profits are safe as they have been transferred.
Would TE have been self sustaining if it was making no payments to its parent company?

Spoonie_Turtle

It's just dawned on me they were a compulsory supplier for the WHD.  Let's hope it doesn't apply to too many of their (former) customers.

Ildhund

DWP have apparently already started remitting WHD payments to suppliers. The deciding factor is who the supplier was on the cut-off date (24 August 2025). What happens next will depend on whether Tomato have already received their tranche, in which case I expect it will pass to the SoLR. If they haven't, it should be remitted to the SoLR. The WHD helpline should be able to help customers in limbo.

born_again

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. 

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. 

Make sure that you keep proof of meter readings & dates, safe for at least couple of years.
As some people are getting companies chasing debts from previously failed suppliers. Which they have no idea about any readings.

wakeupalarm

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. 

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. 

When is the critical point, if the switch request is made now, but Tomato go into administration this evening, before the switch completes, can the SOLR recall the account from the switched to company?

masonic

wakeupalarm said:

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. 

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. 

When is the critical point, if the switch request is made now, but Tomato go into administration this evening, before the switch completes, can the SOLR recall the account from the switched to company?

They can, but if your new supplier notifies you and you act quickly enough you can cancel the SOLR switch attempt. The main concern in that situation is that you will owe money for the energy you have used since your last TE bill. That debt may fall outside of the SOLR process.

bagand96

born_again said:

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. 

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. 

Make sure that you keep proof of meter readings & dates, safe for at least couple of years.
As some people are getting companies chasing debts from previously failed suppliers. Which they have no idea about any readings.

Yep, got bills kept going back 5 years or more (which I learned from reading these forums!).

I've also got screenshots of the meter readings and everything else I can from MyWatts to keep alongside my Tomato Bills. 

Spoonie_Turtle

Ildhund said:

DWP have apparently already started remitting WHD payments to suppliers. The deciding factor is who the supplier was on the cut-off date (24 August 2025). What happens next will depend on whether Tomato have already received their tranche, in which case I expect it will pass to the SoLR. If they haven't, it should be remitted to the SoLR. The WHD helpline should be able to help customers in limbo.

I was more thinking about whether they still have the money if they've received it.  There's a chance that with the ongoing concern it may not have been given to them.  We'll see, I guess.