Utility Warehouse

[Quenched]

Ok so apologies because I have another thread about energy suppliers, but I've now plucked up the courage to mention about my case. 

 

Basically we joined Utility Warehouse UW for short last December, and a guy who sold us to UW came round our house and explained how they keep costs low. 

He said we keep your bills down by combining various utility bills all together, for example in our case we put our house insurance, phone bills, and electricity.

So if I break it down we were paying £80 for our electricity instead of £130 when we we're with Octopus.

So we were delighted at the time, as it seemed we were saving a small fortune. 

But and this is the BIG but. Little did we know we have been under paying for our electricity for a whole year. 

I had an email from UW just before Christmas stating that, we have done an annual review of your energy usage and your in debt by £988!!

I'm thinking hold on, the guy said we keep costs down by combining various utility bills, hence the companies name Utility Warehouse. 

But it seems we have been conned. 

So I started an official complaint, and they said we will shave off £500 of your debt, as I said we think its unfair as this could have easily been addressed sooner.

But they agreed for the next 12 months we only pat for what we use, but based on the last 12 months usage that would typically be £140 a month.

So basically we now have to pay £60 a month more, plus start paying off the £488.

Is this just a case of being screwed over? Shouldn't they erase the debt completely as we are now in financial ruin, and through no fault of our own. 

[Quenched]

barry1010, 

No I have to pay the £488 off as a separate item. 

[Quenched]

THECORBYLOON, 

No we never checked it because the guy said they would get information from the smart meter and adjust the payments to suite the usage, and he told us we don't need to do anything, just let them do it all. 

 

[barry1010]

Hopefully your friends and family will be savvy enough to look at their meter and/or app and see how much they are in credit or debit frequently.  That's all it takes, a few seconds a week.

[Quenched]

Utility Warehouse must have owned up to their mistake otherwise I don't think they would have wiped £500 from the debt.

 

I mentioned in my complaint that we were told to just leave everything to them by the sales guy. 

[Quenched]

barry1010, 

Yeah I hope so, but then if whoever sells it to them uses the same sales pitch, whos to say?

I never thought to check because he said that's what smart meters do. The company gets all the info from them and automatically adjusts payments, but they neglected to do that. 

[barry1010]

I would expect my energy company to notify me if I was getting in to a lot of debt, I'm surprised yours didn't.

How have they asked you pay the debt back - monthly or lump sum? They usually increase the monthly payments

[barry1010]

They can't automatically adjust payments, they do have to notify you that your monthly direct debit is changing. 

[barry1010]

How much have you made from referrals?  Just curious

[davebro3]

By the sound of it you have had a particularly unfortunate experience. I doubt if many other UW customers have suffered likewise.

[barry1010]

Did they give you an in-home display?  A device that connects to your smart meter wirelessly and has all the information you need at the touch of a button? 

[Atheist]

I believe that Octopus base the monthly payment arrangement on your usage history. Over the year I overpay in summer and underpay in winter. At the end of the year I will either owe them money or they will owe me, and it then gets settled up. I don't think a company can just offer a fixed price for the year ahead.

[barry1010]

That's why I'm confused, Atheist. How did Octopus not realise that Quenched was racking up such a big debt?

I think maybe he has misread or misunderstood the email he received. I have never known an energy company to roll over and write £500 off a debt - especially in such a short time frame.  

[Quenched]

barry1010, 

All I know is the guy that came to our house said they would amend payments to be in line with usage. 

I actually was the one suggesting we pay more, but he insisted on leaving everything to them. 

 

We are actually using the same smart meter from when we were with Octopus, it shows you daily usage, weekly, monthly, but I rarely look at it as its so easy to get obsessed with looking at it, it will just drive us crazy. Its not healthy to get obsessed with usage I don't think.  But in hindsight we should have at least checked it monthly. 

 

But then its easy to say all this now, but I will admit we were naive. 

 

Especially if your told leave everything to them. It is baffling why they didn't review our account sooner, but they didn't, they left it for the entire year, and unknowingly we were running up a debt, probably a short fall of £50 to £60 a month depending on usage variation each month. 

[Quenched]

barry1010, 

Its not Octopus we ran the debt up with its Utility Warehouse. 

 

The took £500 off the debt because I complained and said it wasn't our fault, and that the sales guy said leave everything to us. So they must have admitted liability. 

[Quenched]

Atheist, 

Octopus was our previous provider over a year ago now. 

 

The debt was run up with Utility Warehouse. 

 

As I understood it the plan wasn't a fixed rate, because it was explained to us that Utility Warehouse would adjust the amount we pay to fall in line with usage, but they failed to adjust any of the payments at all. But we we're blinded by the guys sales pitch that we keep costs down by including other items with us, so we didn't question for the whole year why no adjustments were being made. 

 

It only hit us when we got the email from them before Christmas that we have done an annual review and noticed we're in debt by £988.

 

Not the best news at Christmas. 

 

So I set about writing an official complaint to them armed with all the information I have mentioned on here, and said I feel we have been conned into thinking we have cheaper electric with Utility Warehouse, when in reality we should have just stayed with Octopus and kept the direct debts at £130 which is what we were paying Octopus.

 

So they must have thought my argument stacked up otherwise they would not have waved £500 off the debt which is actually more than half the debt.

 

But I now have to start paying this £488 back. But all this could have been easily avoided.

 

Its been a learning curve to say the least to not trust a sales person. 

[Maydup]

I have indirect experience of UW doing similar to relatives. Thankfully we stopped it within the cooling off period but the over enthusiastic and charming salesman had convinced our relatives that they would be better off if they combined all of their utilities. This also involved them having broadband which they hadn't  had before and internet TV and connections they simply didn't need or understand. They didn't have a PC, a smart phone or a smart TV.
But the challenge was convincing them that they had been miss-sold as his charm and persuasiveness was such that they simply didn't believe us.

We nearly fell out over it but we got it stopped. 
You have my sympathy and I suggest you are not the first or the last to have encountered an experience like this. Please go back to UW and reject the  £500 offer and ask for the full  debt amount to be credited. 
 

Then once you are back to normal go back to Octopus. 

[Quenched]

Maydup, 

Well believe it or not I did stress that we wanted the whole debt waved in our complaint, but they agreed to wave £500 of the £988 debt.

But comments here are suggesting we are extremely lucky we even got that much taken off the debt. 

 

So I doubt I would get the whole debt wiped off. 

 

But thank you for your kind words. 

 

We just feel cheated because the very thing we were trying to avoid was creating a debt, we even raised this with the sales guy, but he kept insisting leave everything with us. 

 

How foolish were we to fall for it? 

[barry1010]

You need to look at this a different way.

Rather than being financially ruined you are actually £500 better off overall than you would have been had they taken the correct payments.

At this moment you have over £900 that should have been paid to UW.

Just agree a repayment plan to pay back the money you owe, and be thankful for the £500.

 

[Quenched]

barry1010, 

Yeah true, I'm grateful they took off £500. But doesn't that mean they have admitted liability for this particular mistake.

 

If they did what they said they were going to do we wouldn't be in this mess. 

 

It seems to be a miss communication between the sales guy that came to our house, and the actual company. 

 

We just don't feel any of this is our fault.  

 

I'm not sure how unique this case is, but if it was common I'm sure it would bankrupt the company in no time, as they can't keep giving people back money through silly mistakes like this. 

[barry1010]

If they did what you expected them to do you would have been paying around £90 a month more. What have you done with that money?