Energy
IT'S A JUNGLE OUT THERE!
DO NOT SIGN A CONTRACT WITH A SUPPLIER DIRECTLY.
This is an example of how businesses like yours get caught out every day by suppliers.
COMPARISON
| Broker Contract | Supplier Contract |
|---|---|
| Fully Fixed Price Contract | Fixed Price Contract |
| KWH Fixed | KWH Fixed |
| Pass Through Charges Fixed | Pass Through Charges Variable |
| Taxation Variable | Taxation Variable |
These two offerings may look very similar. In fact, the suppliers contract will almost certainly look cheaper.
However, what it actually means is that if you choose the suppliers contract, your prices will go up every year.
Remember, the right broker will investigate the marketplace to find the best deal, read the terms and conditions of any contract that they want you to sign, advise you of the pitfalls in that contract and make sure you never find yourself out of contract.
If you choose the supplier contract, charges will go up every year that you are in the agreement.
WHERE DO I FIND THE END DATE OF MY CURRENT SUPPLIER AGREEMENT?
Fortunately, this is very simple. It will be on your monthly paper invoice. It is a requirement from OFGEM that it is displayed on our invoice.
This means, you might have to look a bit to find it, but your contract end date is somewhere on your monthly bill.
I DO NOT RECEIVE PAPER BILLS.
If you only get an online bill, it should also be displayed on the home screen of your online account.
This means, you might have to login to your online account to find your contract end date or call your supplier.
I STILL CAN’T FIND MY CONTRACT END DATE.
If you are not able to find it, you can always call your supplier and get it from them. You will need a copy of your bill handy as you will have to pass data security to access your account details.
This means, you might have to waste some time on hold with the suppliers call centre.
WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH MY CONTRACT END DATE DETAILS?
It is important that you record this date somewhere safe. If you miss the termination date and slip into an out of contract rate, your costs will increase massively.
This means, if you miss your contract end date, your prices will increase considerably and in many cases you are stuck with those price increases for another year.
If you are in a direct contract with a supplier, they will not go out of their way to inform you that your contract is coming to an end.
They will send you a letter advising you of their pricing for your new contract should you elect to stay with them. If you do nothing, you will go onto their out of contract rates and your rates will increase substantially.
If you accept the pricing for the new contract that they have set out in the letter, you will definitely be spending more than you should and the terms and conditions of that contract will not be the best available to you.
WHY DOESN’T ANYBODY READ MY METER ANYMORE?
Since deregulation, the responsibility for reading your meter has shifted from your supplier to you. You are now responsible for making sure that your supplier has an up-to-date accurate meter reading.
This means that any errors in the accuracy of their billing are now your responsibility.
HOW DO I GET BILLED EVEN WHEN I DON’T PROVIDE A METER READING?
In the absence of actual readings, the suppliers make provision in their contracts to estimate your usage. The readings are very often wildly out of kilter with your usage.
This means it will be almost impossible for your bills to be right.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN IF MY BILL IS UNDERESTIMATED?
If your estimates are too low, it may seem okay because you are getting a lower bill than you would normally expect. However, the moment that your supplier is in possession of an accurate read, they will take all the monies owed from your account in one go with no warning.
This means at the end of your contract, when you want to move supplier you may well have a big bill to pay.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN IF MY BILL IS OVERESTIMATED?
If your estimate is too high, the supplier will hold onto your money and continue to collect your direct debit even if they are in possession of an accurate read. They will not refund your money voluntarily.
This means at the end of your contract when you are trying to move to a new supplier, you will have a fight on your hands to try to recover your overpayments.
Beware if you have underpaid for your energy. Your supplier will not let you leave them unless you have settled your account. To make things even worse, if you do not settle this account in time you will find yourself on out of contract rates to boot.
Not only will you have to pay the balance in one go for the period that you are out of contract, you will also very likely pay 40% more for your gas or electric supply.
Ian owns an organic farm and farm shop in Hampshire, he has a staff of 10 or so employees all who rely on the farm for their livelihood.
The farm serves as a great hub for the community. They host events across the year aimed at drawing families into the farm. Reminding them where their food comes from and how important the environment is to us all.
As most people do Ian set up a direct debit to pay his electricity bill and assumed that everything would take care of itself.
Every month Ian paid his direct debit on time for the amount requested. Ian realised after a period that his meter had not been read so periodically he supplied Scottish Power with his readings.
What he didn’t know was that because his readings were so out of kilter with Scottish power’s estimates they didn’t ever apply the reads that he was sending them to his accountant.
This only came to light when Ian tried to change supplier at the end of his contract. When he did try to move, Scottish power objected to the move and stopped it from happening.
When they took final meter readings it generated a bill of £39,000 not only that, because the supply did not move to the new company, it remained with Scottish power on out of contract rates that were nearly 40% higher than Ian’s contracted rates.
This is the situation Ian found himself in and really didn’t know where to turn. Fortunately, Ian involved Red Gorilla stood back and let us deal with his situation.
Ian is now with a new supplier, his new supplier, supply 100% green energy which is very important for the credentials of their business.
We helped Ian force Scottish Power to release his supply and have taken his complain to the Ombudsman services to highlight Scottish Power’s negligence.
However, this could all have been avoided by spending a couple of hours over the period of the contract by completing some simple checks & controls.
WHY SHOULD I PASSWORD PROTECT MY ACCOUNT?
There is enough information out there in the public domain for outside agencies to put you into a contract without your knowledge and secure a commission and this happens every single day. If you realise that this has happened, you can reverse it but you will have to prove it wasn’t you that made the agreement and this will take many hours on the phone arguing with the supplier that has already paid out a commission and will have to fight themselves to get it back.
This means that by taking five minutes to password protect your account you can save yourself many hours of aggravation and possibly thousands of pounds.
WHO SHOULD HAVE THE PASSWORD?
If you only give details of your password to the people in your business who are authorised to make changes to and negotiate new contract terms, should anyone else attempt to submit a contract to your supplier, make any changes to your account or gather any sensitive supplier information about your account, they will not be able to. nobody else in your business can be duped into agreeing a new supplier agreement for your business.
This means nobody in your business that is unauthorised can be duped into signing a legally binding agreement on behalf of your company.
There are still some suppliers that will not allow you to password protect your account and these kinds of accounts can never be fully secured.
Paschal runs a restaurant in Sussex. He was in the middle of opening his second restaurant when he received a call from his supplier BG.
Unfortunately, Paschal didn’t take the call, one of his staff did.
A man with a heavy Indian accent, called Ben, duped the member of staff into believing that his boss was out of contract for his gas supply and was calling to simply renew the contract on the same terms as he was currently on and that Paschal had told him to call the restaurant to sort it out.
He asked the member of staff to get a copy of the latest bill out and proceeded to get all the information that he needed to be able to put in a new contract on the restaurant’s behalf with BG.
He then took the member of staff through a legally binding verbal contract. This contract actually increased the customers costs by 36%. Not only this, the new supply was not with BG at all. The contract was for four years and it made provision for the new supplier to increase the contract prices annually.
Had this account been password protected, the new company would never have been able to move the supply away.
If the employee had known to ask for a password the rogue agency would not have got 30 seconds into the call.
In this instance we were lucky that the customer was already a telecom customer of ours and we were able to provide BG and the new supplier with a copy of the call to demonstrate what had transpired.
We did get the supply back, but it took many hours on the phone for both us & Paschal. All of this could have been avoided simply by implementing a password.
DID WE GET IT WRONG? OUR COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE
At Red Gorilla we take complaints very seriously. They are a double-edged sword. On the positive side they help us in our continual drive for improvement of service delivery to our customers.
On the other hand, we are totally aware that no-one, who runs a Micro Business, really has the time to go through this process and would much rather be running their business.
We realise that if you feel that you must engage with this process, then something is amiss.
With that in mind, we will treat you with courtesy and respect. We will not enter the process with a predetermined opinion that we are right.
MAKING A COMPLAINT
First step:
Call our specialist team on 02392 253322 to give us the opportunity to put it right. If you prefer you can email complaints@redgorillauk.co.uk or write to:
Complaints Team
Red Gorilla UK Ltd,
Larch House, Parklands Business Park,
Denmead
Hants,
PO76XP
NEXT
What we’ll do:
We will acknowledge your complaint and issue a complaint number within 2 working days of receiving your complaint.
We will try to resolve your complaint as quickly as possible. We will give you an explanation and an apology for any problems we have caused and take action to put things right. You will have a response within five working days of your raising your complaint.
Second step:
In the unlikely event that our specialist team have been unable to resolve your complaint, or you remain unhappy you can ask for your complaint to be referred to our Executive Complaints Team and request that they contact you by phone or letter. Alternatively, you can email. complaints@redgorillauk.co.uk or write to:
Complaints Team
Red Gorilla UK Ltd,
Larch House, Parklands Business Park,
Denmead
Hants,
PO76XP
NEXT
What we’ll do:
We’ll carry out a review of all the actions we’ve taken and all correspondence between us. We’ll work with you to resolve your complaint and keep you informed through to resolution.
We will investigate your complaint fairly and present our findings on a purely factual basis.
You can be confident that whichever media that you choose to conduct the complaint, we will be courteous and treat you with the respect that you deserve as a valued customer.
If at any point you feel that this is not the case or you are feeling frustrated, please contact the MD of our company, Danny Williams, at danny@redgorillauk.co.uk or 02392 253322 and he will take up your case.
Third step:
If you’ve followed steps 1 and 2 and remain unhappy or we haven’t been able to resolve your complaint, the Executive Complaints Team will refer your complaint to our Head of Customer Relations for review.
Next
What we’ll do
Our Head of Customer Relations will investigate how we’ve handled the complaint, what advice we’ve given you and what we’ve offered to do to see if we should do anything differently. We will let you know what the outcome of the decision is and the reasons for our decision. You’ll then receive a Final Response letter explaining our final position.
Our final review, and final resolution will be issued as soon as is practicable. We may have to glean information from suppliers for the purposes of resolution. We will endeavour to furnish you with a final resolution as quickly as we can. The latest we will provide our final resolution is eight weeks from the day that the complaint was initially raised.
Should our resolution still not be acceptable to you, and you feel that our proposed actions require third party dispute resolution all details you will need to contact the relevant parties willbe in our final response.
Whilst we are sure that our internal dispute resolution process is exhaustive and shall, in nearly all circumstances, resolve any customer issue. We are aware that on occasion there may be a difference of opinion as to exactly what constitutes a fair and equitable resolution of the dispute in question.
In such situations we are pleased to tell you that we are a member of Ombudsmen Services. Ombudsmen Services are a third Party who offer independent dispute resolution services to any of our customers that choose to access their services. This service is offered to the customer free of charge.
What this means is, if, after our complaint handling team have exhausted our processes, we have issued our final resolution letter, and you find our final position un-acceptable. Or if more than 8 weeks have passed since you first opened the complaint and we have not reached a mutually acceptable resolution to your complaint. Then you can, without cost, engage the services of Ombudsmen Service to adjudicate in the matter.
Ombudsmen Service are a Non-Profit, impartial organisation specifically designed to adjudicate in disputes between Energy Suppliers, Brokers, and Micro Business Customers.
You can access their services if one of these points is true of your business.
- You have less than 10 Employees.
- You consume less than 100,000 kwh of electricity a year. (If the dispute is about an electric supply.)
- You consume less than 293,000 kwh of gas a year. if the dispute is about a gas supply.)
- Your business turnover is less than €2,000,000.00 (Two million euros).
Assuming your business qualifies on one of the above criteria, and you have given us the opportunity to resolve the issue in line with our complaint handling procedure. Red Gorilla will meet all the charges levied by Ombudsmen Services for their dispute resolution services.
USEFUL CONTACTS
DO NOT SIGN A CONTRACT WITH A SUPPLIER DIRECTLY.
This is an example of how businesses like yours get caught out every day by suppliers.
COMPARISON
| Broker Contract | Supplier Contract |
|---|---|
| Fully Fixed Price Contract | Fixed Price Contract |
| KWH Fixed | KWH Fixed |
| Pass Through Charges Fixed | Pass Through Charges Variable |
| Taxation Variable | Taxation Variable |
These two offerings may look very similar. In fact, the suppliers contract will almost certainly look cheaper.
However, what it actually means is that if you choose the suppliers contract, your prices will go up every year.
Remember, the right broker will investigate the marketplace to find the best deal, read the terms and conditions of any contract that they want you to sign, advise you of the pitfalls in that contract and make sure you never find yourself out of contract.
If you choose the supplier contract, charges will go up every year that you are in the agreement.
WHERE DO I FIND THE END DATE OF MY CURRENT SUPPLIER AGREEMENT?
Fortunately, this is very simple. It will be on your monthly paper invoice. It is a requirement from OFGEM that it is displayed on our invoice.
This means, you might have to look a bit to find it, but your contract end date is somewhere on your monthly bill.
I DO NOT RECEIVE PAPER BILLS.
If you only get an online bill, it should also be displayed on the home screen of your online account.
This means, you might have to login to your online account to find your contract end date or call your supplier.
I STILL CAN’T FIND MY CONTRACT END DATE.
If you are not able to find it, you can always call your supplier and get it from them. You will need a copy of your bill handy as you will have to pass data security to access your account details.
This means, you might have to waste some time on hold with the suppliers call centre.
WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH MY CONTRACT END DATE DETAILS?
It is important that you record this date somewhere safe. If you miss the termination date and slip into an out of contract rate, your costs will increase massively.
This means, if you miss your contract end date, your prices will increase considerably and in many cases you are stuck with those price increases for another year.
If you are in a direct contract with a supplier, they will not go out of their way to inform you that your contract is coming to an end.
They will send you a letter advising you of their pricing for your new contract should you elect to stay with them. If you do nothing, you will go onto their out of contract rates and your rates will increase substantially.
If you accept the pricing for the new contract that they have set out in the letter, you will definitely be spending more than you should and the terms and conditions of that contract will not be the best available to you.
WHY DOESN’T ANYBODY READ MY METER ANYMORE?
Since deregulation, the responsibility for reading your meter has shifted from your supplier to you. You are now responsible for making sure that your supplier has an up-to-date accurate meter reading.
This means that any errors in the accuracy of their billing are now your responsibility.
HOW DO I GET BILLED EVEN WHEN I DON’T PROVIDE A METER READING?
In the absence of actual readings, the suppliers make provision in their contracts to estimate your usage. The readings are very often wildly out of kilter with your usage.
This means it will be almost impossible for your bills to be right.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN IF MY BILL IS UNDERESTIMATED?
If your estimates are too low, it may seem okay because you are getting a lower bill than you would normally expect. However, the moment that your supplier is in possession of an accurate read, they will take all the monies owed from your account in one go with no warning.
This means at the end of your contract, when you want to move supplier you may well have a big bill to pay.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN IF MY BILL IS OVERESTIMATED?
If your estimate is too high, the supplier will hold onto your money and continue to collect your direct debit even if they are in possession of an accurate read. They will not refund your money voluntarily.
This means at the end of your contract when you are trying to move to a new supplier, you will have a fight on your hands to try to recover your overpayments.
Beware if you have underpaid for your energy. Your supplier will not let you leave them unless you have settled your account. To make things even worse, if you do not settle this account in time you will find yourself on out of contract rates to boot.
Not only will you have to pay the balance in one go for the period that you are out of contract, you will also very likely pay 40% more for your gas or electric supply.
Ian owns an organic farm and farm shop in Hampshire, he has a staff of 10 or so employees all who rely on the farm for their livelihood.
The farm serves as a great hub for the community. They host events across the year aimed at drawing families into the farm. Reminding them where their food comes from and how important the environment is to us all.
As most people do Ian set up a direct debit to pay his electricity bill and assumed that everything would take care of itself.
Every month Ian paid his direct debit on time for the amount requested. Ian realised after a period that his meter had not been read so periodically he supplied Scottish Power with his readings.
What he didn’t know was that because his readings were so out of kilter with Scottish power’s estimates they didn’t ever apply the reads that he was sending them to his accountant.
This only came to light when Ian tried to change supplier at the end of his contract. When he did try to move, Scottish power objected to the move and stopped it from happening.
When they took final meter readings it generated a bill of £39,000 not only that, because the supply did not move to the new company, it remained with Scottish power on out of contract rates that were nearly 40% higher than Ian’s contracted rates.
This is the situation Ian found himself in and really didn’t know where to turn. Fortunately, Ian involved Red Gorilla stood back and let us deal with his situation.
Ian is now with a new supplier, his new supplier, supply 100% green energy which is very important for the credentials of their business.
We helped Ian force Scottish Power to release his supply and have taken his complain to the Ombudsman services to highlight Scottish Power’s negligence.
However, this could all have been avoided by spending a couple of hours over the period of the contract by completing some simple checks & controls.
WHY SHOULD I PASSWORD PROTECT MY ACCOUNT?
There is enough information out there in the public domain for outside agencies to put you into a contract without your knowledge and secure a commission and this happens every single day. If you realise that this has happened, you can reverse it but you will have to prove it wasn’t you that made the agreement and this will take many hours on the phone arguing with the supplier that has already paid out a commission and will have to fight themselves to get it back.
This means that by taking five minutes to password protect your account you can save yourself many hours of aggravation and possibly thousands of pounds.
WHO SHOULD HAVE THE PASSWORD?
If you only give details of your password to the people in your business who are authorised to make changes to and negotiate new contract terms, should anyone else attempt to submit a contract to your supplier, make any changes to your account or gather any sensitive supplier information about your account, they will not be able to. nobody else in your business can be duped into agreeing a new supplier agreement for your business.
This means nobody in your business that is unauthorised can be duped into signing a legally binding agreement on behalf of your company.
There are still some suppliers that will not allow you to password protect your account and these kinds of accounts can never be fully secured.
Paschal runs a restaurant in Sussex. He was in the middle of opening his second restaurant when he received a call from his supplier BG.
Unfortunately, Paschal didn’t take the call, one of his staff did.
A man with a heavy Indian accent, called Ben, duped the member of staff into believing that his boss was out of contract for his gas supply and was calling to simply renew the contract on the same terms as he was currently on and that Paschal had told him to call the restaurant to sort it out.
He asked the member of staff to get a copy of the latest bill out and proceeded to get all the information that he needed to be able to put in a new contract on the restaurant’s behalf with BG.
He then took the member of staff through a legally binding verbal contract. This contract actually increased the customers costs by 36%. Not only this, the new supply was not with BG at all. The contract was for four years and it made provision for the new supplier to increase the contract prices annually.
Had this account been password protected, the new company would never have been able to move the supply away.
If the employee had known to ask for a password the rogue agency would not have got 30 seconds into the call.
In this instance we were lucky that the customer was already a telecom customer of ours and we were able to provide BG and the new supplier with a copy of the call to demonstrate what had transpired.
We did get the supply back, but it took many hours on the phone for both us & Paschal. All of this could have been avoided simply by implementing a password.
DID WE GET IT WRONG? OUR COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE
At Red Gorilla we take complaints very seriously. They are a double-edged sword. On the positive side they help us in our continual drive for improvement of service delivery to our customers.
On the other hand, we are totally aware that no-one, who runs a Micro Business, really has the time to go through this process and would much rather be running their business.
We realise that if you feel that you must engage with this process, then something is amiss.
With that in mind, we will treat you with courtesy and respect. We will not enter the process with a predetermined opinion that we are right.
MAKING A COMPLAINT
First step:
Call our specialist team on 02392 253322 to give us the opportunity to put it right. If you prefer you can email complaints@redgorillauk.co.uk or write to:
Complaints Team
Red Gorilla UK Ltd,
Larch House, Parklands Business Park,
Denmead
Hants,
PO76XP
NEXT
What we’ll do:
We will acknowledge your complaint and issue a complaint number within 2 working days of receiving your complaint.
We will try to resolve your complaint as quickly as possible. We will give you an explanation and an apology for any problems we have caused and take action to put things right. You will have a response within five working days of your raising your complaint.
Second step:
In the unlikely event that our specialist team have been unable to resolve your complaint, or you remain unhappy you can ask for your complaint to be referred to our Executive Complaints Team and request that they contact you by phone or letter. Alternatively, you can email. complaints@redgorillauk.co.uk or write to:
Complaints Team
Red Gorilla UK Ltd,
Larch House, Parklands Business Park,
Denmead
Hants,
PO76XP
NEXT
What we’ll do:
We’ll carry out a review of all the actions we’ve taken and all correspondence between us. We’ll work with you to resolve your complaint and keep you informed through to resolution.
We will investigate your complaint fairly and present our findings on a purely factual basis.
You can be confident that whichever media that you choose to conduct the complaint, we will be courteous and treat you with the respect that you deserve as a valued customer.
If at any point you feel that this is not the case or you are feeling frustrated, please contact the MD of our company, Danny Williams, at danny@redgorillauk.co.uk or 02392 253322 and he will take up your case.
Third step:
If you’ve followed steps 1 and 2 and remain unhappy or we haven’t been able to resolve your complaint, the Executive Complaints Team will refer your complaint to our Head of Customer Relations for review.
Next
What we’ll do
Our Head of Customer Relations will investigate how we’ve handled the complaint, what advice we’ve given you and what we’ve offered to do to see if we should do anything differently. We will let you know what the outcome of the decision is and the reasons for our decision. You’ll then receive a Final Response letter explaining our final position.
Our final review, and final resolution will be issued as soon as is practicable. We may have to glean information from suppliers for the purposes of resolution. We will endeavour to furnish you with a final resolution as quickly as we can. The latest we will provide our final resolution is eight weeks from the day that the complaint was initially raised.
Should our resolution still not be acceptable to you, and you feel that our proposed actions require third party dispute resolution all details you will need to contact the relevant parties willbe in our final response.
Whilst we are sure that our internal dispute resolution process is exhaustive and shall, in nearly all circumstances, resolve any customer issue. We are aware that on occasion there may be a difference of opinion as to exactly what constitutes a fair and equitable resolution of the dispute in question.
In such situations we are pleased to tell you that we are a member of Ombudsmen Services. Ombudsmen Services are a third Party who offer independent dispute resolution services to any of our customers that choose to access their services. This service is offered to the customer free of charge.
What this means is, if, after our complaint handling team have exhausted our processes, we have issued our final resolution letter, and you find our final position un-acceptable. Or if more than 8 weeks have passed since you first opened the complaint and we have not reached a mutually acceptable resolution to your complaint. Then you can, without cost, engage the services of Ombudsmen Service to adjudicate in the matter.
Ombudsmen Service are a Non-Profit, impartial organisation specifically designed to adjudicate in disputes between Energy Suppliers, Brokers, and Micro Business Customers.
You can access their services if one of these points is true of your business.
- You have less than 10 Employees.
- You consume less than 100,000 kwh of electricity a year. (If the dispute is about an electric supply.)
- You consume less than 293,000 kwh of gas a year. if the dispute is about a gas supply.)
- Your business turnover is less than €2,000,000.00 (Two million euros).
Assuming your business qualifies on one of the above criteria, and you have given us the opportunity to resolve the issue in line with our complaint handling procedure. Red Gorilla will meet all the charges levied by Ombudsmen Services for their dispute resolution services.
USEFUL CONTACTS
