Add your feedback on energy supplier Iresa

warwickbears wrote: »

I transferred my electricity supply to Bulb in early June. To date, I am still waiting for Iresa to refund the money they owe me, and close the account their end.


I have made numerous calls to their 'customer service' - I begin to wonder if they only employ 3 agents, as I have only ever spoken to Sonia, Aidan or Vlad.


Trying to get a straight answer from them as to what will happen when has been nigh on impossible, and I quite frankly rue the day I ever started having dealings with this shocking firm.

Sounds like cash flow control issues - I worked for a small firm some time ago, who employed 3 people to chase up debts .... but any credits could only be made by the managing director's authority -which was almost impossible to get:eek:

On the plus side, my electricity is on, and they're paying me interest on my accumulating credit balance since they can't manage to generate a bill...

I still have a dispute in progress about my opening read from when I switched in April. Iresa says they're waiting for a response from Green Star; Green Star says they haven't heard anything from Iresa except for the supposed closing/opening "reads" (numbers pulled out of thin air, despite me actually supplying reads).

I'm also trying to get someone out to fix my meter. Because it takes at least two weeks to get a reply to an email/message, it's impossible to set a day. They ask me to send my availability for a particular week, but they don't read/respond until after that week has passed.

It's a joke, really.

SnowMan wrote: »

I received a determination from the Ombudsman in the past few weeks on these precise issues.

They agreed that IRESA had used a calorific value of 40.0 in their calculations (although IRESA had told me they hadn't) and that IRESA had failed to communicate properly.

However the Ombudsman said they weren't able to check whether the calorific value was 39.5 for the billing period I had given them a copy of the bill for, so they were just going to assume that IRESA were right to use 40.0, and I was wrong

The Ombudsman had enough info to realise that the calorific value was less than 40.0, they could have gone on the National Grid website and spotted that the daily calorific values were below 40.0 for every single day of the period.

Needless to say I have not accepted the determination

The Energy Ombudsman service have now issued a revised determination, and agree that the wrong calorific value was used :j. In their words

Based on the further information provided, I am satisfied that Iresa originally used an incorrect calorific value to bill your gas supply

The original decision by the Ombudsman to award a small goodwill payment (I didn't request this) to me stands. And IRESA have been asked to send a written apology to me.

IRESA have now replaced the incorrect bills with almost correct bills in my online account (the calorific value is still slightly wrong because of the rounding I believe).

Just need to get them to issue my final bills, and refund me my credit and goodwill payment, and the escape will be complete.

While I'm slightly surprised the Energy Ombudsman service didn't confirm the wrong calorific value initially, have to say overall I'm very impressed with how the Energy Ombudsman have handled this :T

I**** have now submitted a Confirmation Statement - Statement of Capital, (Share Capital). The Director now holds a large amount of shares, 1000000, with a second shareholding amount of 30928 shares. A total of 1030928. Rather more than the 1 share previously held?

Things seem to be settling into a routine with Iresa now.

They request meter readings and re-notify of the Direct Debit every month.
They process electricity readings every month and raise a charge against the balance (as expected)
They only process gas readings every other month. The CV value used is still obscured by the 'multiplier', but the billed amount is, by my own detailed calculation, correct. I won't know until the winter if this is because low summer usage reduces any error below 1p. What I do know is that by only raising charges against the credit balance every 2 months for gas, they have paid me more in additional credit interest than they have (again, by my own calculations) overcharged due to incorrect CV values earlier in the contract.

I think my DD is a little on the high side (£3-4/m), as I now project I'll be using less electricity (-15%) and more gas (+17%) than last year, but given other people's experience in getting it reviewed, and the interest paid, I don't think it's worth my time chasing that up.