Utilities - can you be silently changed to alt supplier?
Discussion
Brief summary
Tenant moves into small flat formerly having utilities supplied by E-on and she is a former customer of E-on
Tenant calls E-on to start account who advise they are sending out a final account as she is moving to Spark – she says she wants to stay with them. E-on advise nothing they can do to stop Spark taking the account. Tenant subsequently pays E-on account
Spark send mahoosive bill with no itemisation followed by a welcome pack.
Tenant calls Spark who imply she is contractually bound to them. They do not return as promised the call regarding tariff or size of bill.
E-on refuse to take tenant on until she clears Spark account.
Q1 Anyone any experience of Spark – are they linked to E-on in some way?
Q2 Can your utilities be forcibly moved to a new supplier against your wishes?
Q3 Best advice for tenant – should she tell Spark to stick their bill unless they can show a contract? What comeback is there on assigning her to a really bad tariff?
Tenant moves into small flat formerly having utilities supplied by E-on and she is a former customer of E-on
Tenant calls E-on to start account who advise they are sending out a final account as she is moving to Spark – she says she wants to stay with them. E-on advise nothing they can do to stop Spark taking the account. Tenant subsequently pays E-on account
Spark send mahoosive bill with no itemisation followed by a welcome pack.
Tenant calls Spark who imply she is contractually bound to them. They do not return as promised the call regarding tariff or size of bill.
E-on refuse to take tenant on until she clears Spark account.
Q1 Anyone any experience of Spark – are they linked to E-on in some way?
Q2 Can your utilities be forcibly moved to a new supplier against your wishes?
Q3 Best advice for tenant – should she tell Spark to stick their bill unless they can show a contract? What comeback is there on assigning her to a really bad tariff?
Willhire89 said:
As far as we can tell no one has given Spark any authority.
Whatever prior tenant may have done would surely have no bearing on new tenant anyway?
Ah I see now. Was the previous tenant kicked out? Could they have authorised the change before they left.Whatever prior tenant may have done would surely have no bearing on new tenant anyway?
Anyone moving into a property inherits the existing supplier until they change it. The current tenant needs to change it asap by the sounds of it.
PurpleMoonlight said:
E.on should have a fraudulent transfer section to deal with situations like this. If the bill payer did not authorise the transfer then it should be possible for E.on to take it back.
E.on initially stated that they were not able to keep the account because Spark had authority. E.on later said that the account with Spark had to be paid n full before they would take back the account. The Spark bill is £200 for nine weeks in a small one bed flat and is not itemised in any way and tenant cannot afford.
PurpleMoonlight said:
Willhire89 said:
As far as we can tell no one has given Spark any authority.
Whatever prior tenant may have done would surely have no bearing on new tenant anyway?
Ah I see now. Was the previous tenant kicked out? Could they have authorised the change before they left.Whatever prior tenant may have done would surely have no bearing on new tenant anyway?
Anyone moving into a property inherits the existing supplier until they change it. The current tenant needs to change it asap by the sounds of it.
The existing supplier was E.on and they billed for most of the month of January .....tenant moved in on 2nd Jan
Willhire89 said:
The Spark bill is £200 for nine weeks in a small one bed flat and is not itemised in any way and tenant cannot afford.
If heating is electric that doesn't sound that unreasonable.How does she expect to pay E.on if she cant afford to pay Spark?
Seems she has finance issues to me.
PurpleMoonlight said:
Willhire89 said:
The Spark bill is £200 for nine weeks in a small one bed flat and is not itemised in any way and tenant cannot afford.
If heating is electric that doesn't sound that unreasonable.How does she expect to pay E.on if she cant afford to pay Spark?
Seems she has finance issues to me.
To me it seems a lot for a small modern flat with one external wall.
JustinP1 said:
Who called Spark?
Good question - I have just seen the posting below on moneysupermarket:Ok to make long story short(er), I moved to a new home, agency who did my contract even tho my house is landlord managed and not agency managed they included a clause into my contract that they may supply my information to Spark Energy and that at the beginning of my contract the house will be supplied with them or in the process being supplied with them.
This might be what happened - they are a new agent that I used this time.
Lots of postings stating how hard it is to get Spark to not grab or release an account
We've spent the best part of two years (and counting) sorting out a similar situation with our electricity supply - SSE took the supply off npower without authority. In our case, I understand that it was caused by the supply point having the wrong postcode in the database - that somehow led to it being marked as "unregistered" (for want of a better word). The first we knew was when npower phoned to confirm that we were cancelling. From there, it should have been a simple case of transferring it back through the Erroneous Transfer process (should be transferred back, and everything billed by the original supplier as though you'd never left them).
I don't know whether that would apply in this case - I can't see why it shouldn't though, and it's certainly worth asking the question. It should be quite straightforward if so (it went wrong for us when npower kept refusing to take the supply back because of the postcode discrepancy - by the time we all realised that was where it had gone wrong, SSE declared that they'd tried to give it back and weren't going to try again!).
If nothing else, you can have the simple pleasure of phoning them and asking to speak to E.T.!
I don't know whether that would apply in this case - I can't see why it shouldn't though, and it's certainly worth asking the question. It should be quite straightforward if so (it went wrong for us when npower kept refusing to take the supply back because of the postcode discrepancy - by the time we all realised that was where it had gone wrong, SSE declared that they'd tried to give it back and weren't going to try again!).
If nothing else, you can have the simple pleasure of phoning them and asking to speak to E.T.!
Willhire89 said:
JustinP1 said:
Who called Spark?
Good question - I have just seen the posting below on moneysupermarket:Ok to make long story short(er), I moved to a new home, agency who did my contract even tho my house is landlord managed and not agency managed they included a clause into my contract that they may supply my information to Spark Energy and that at the beginning of my contract the house will be supplied with them or in the process being supplied with them.
This might be what happened - they are a new agent that I used this time.
Lots of postings stating how hard it is to get Spark to not grab or release an account
By law, you can't change suppliers for 6 weeks. For those 6 weeks you are put on a default tariff. You won't see this tariff on the comparison sites as it's 30% more expensive.
My total guess would be the agent or landlord get a bonus for setting up the contract. The tenant is now stuck paying over the odds for a minimum of 6 weeks, or more if they are not clued up.
JustinP1 said:
Why it happens is simple.
By law, you can't change suppliers for 6 weeks. For those 6 weeks you are put on a default tariff. You won't see this tariff on the comparison sites as it's 30% more expensive.
What law exactly? That's not in any Supply Licence clause that I've ever seen. Anywhere. And isn't something I've ever come across in ten years working in the industry.By law, you can't change suppliers for 6 weeks. For those 6 weeks you are put on a default tariff. You won't see this tariff on the comparison sites as it's 30% more expensive.
Also, Deemed tariffs aren't always more expensive than standard evergreen rate, although I don't doubt that some suppliers charge a premium.
OP - Spark Energy seem to have deals with letting agents as far as I can gather, they pay some sort of commission to take on the property, there is no legitimate reason why the tenant can't change supplier but if they owe Spark money then they can object on those grounds.
However, Spark really do need to show how they calculate the debt. Under the Consumer Estate Agents Redress Act the tenant can raise a complaint with Spark, demanding an itemised bill showing an opening and latest reading in order to resolve it (this would by default show how the debt was worked out) Spark need to provide a complaint reference number and cannot close it until it's resolved, they then either provide a deadlock letter if resolution can't be reached, or after 40 days the tenant can take their complaint to the ombudsman.
Blue Oval84 said:
JustinP1 said:
Why it happens is simple.
By law, you can't change suppliers for 6 weeks. For those 6 weeks you are put on a default tariff. You won't see this tariff on the comparison sites as it's 30% more expensive.
What law exactly? That's not in any Supply Licence clause that I've ever seen. Anywhere. And isn't something I've ever come across in ten years working in the industry.By law, you can't change suppliers for 6 weeks. For those 6 weeks you are put on a default tariff. You won't see this tariff on the comparison sites as it's 30% more expensive.
Also, Deemed tariffs aren't always more expensive than standard evergreen rate, although I don't doubt that some suppliers charge a premium.
OP - Spark Energy seem to have deals with letting agents as far as I can gather, they pay some sort of commission to take on the property, there is no legitimate reason why the tenant can't change supplier but if they owe Spark money then they can object on those grounds.
However, Spark really do need to show how they calculate the debt. Under the Consumer Estate Agents Redress Act the tenant can raise a complaint with Spark, demanding an itemised bill showing an opening and latest reading in order to resolve it (this would by default show how the debt was worked out) Spark need to provide a complaint reference number and cannot close it until it's resolved, they then either provide a deadlock letter if resolution can't be reached, or after 40 days the tenant can take their complaint to the ombudsman.
What I mean is once you have a deemed contract in place, it takes 6 weeks to move to a different supplier, and there's nothing that I know of that you can do about it, and by law you are in a contract with the supplier connected when you arrive.
I can't remember the exact conversation with the company in question, however, I did press the issue of this being able to be done faster, and I was quoted regs which basically said a process had to be followed, and there were minimum and maximum times that were allowed.
So, for all intents and purposes, the agent or landlord is taking a bung so that the tenant is stuck with overly expensive electricity for a minimum period.
Edited by JustinP1 on Saturday 2nd May 09:25
Ah right, I see what you're saying.
The gist is that due to the introduction of quicker switching you can now change in about two weeks, and that will fall to a few days at some point.
A while back though it did take a four to six weeks to change supplier, although I'm not sure that it was so much "law" as it was just the defined industry process took a while. Although the defined process would be laid down in the Master Registration Agreement so probably easy enough for an advisor to gloss over it and just refer to a generic "law".
I just did a quick quote with them and they're about £250 per year more than my current supplier. Not great at all.
That said, it's not THAT expensive and therefore the £200 bill seems odd. Checking Spark's Ts & Cs gives me-
3 Deemed contract
3.1 The Contract between you and us is a Deemed Contract where: a) you are an owner or occupier of the Premises; b)we are the registered supplier at the Premises prior to you taking a supply of Energy there; and c) you start to take a supply of Energy at the Premises without having taken any of the actions at clauses 2.4(a) to 2.4(d) to enter into a contract with us or you start to take a supply of Energy after such a contract has ended.
3.2 Where we supply Energy to the Premises under a Deemed Contract, the prices charged for the supply of Energy will be: a) the currently applicable prices under our Direct Debit Saver price plan; or b) where we have notified you that our Monthly Premium price plan applies, the currently applicable prices under that price plan, and these prices are available to you at http://www.sparkenergy.co.uk/tariffs
So, it should be very easy to work out the correct bill yourself using the opening meter reading, and the latest meter reading.
The gist is that due to the introduction of quicker switching you can now change in about two weeks, and that will fall to a few days at some point.
A while back though it did take a four to six weeks to change supplier, although I'm not sure that it was so much "law" as it was just the defined industry process took a while. Although the defined process would be laid down in the Master Registration Agreement so probably easy enough for an advisor to gloss over it and just refer to a generic "law".
I just did a quick quote with them and they're about £250 per year more than my current supplier. Not great at all.
That said, it's not THAT expensive and therefore the £200 bill seems odd. Checking Spark's Ts & Cs gives me-
3 Deemed contract
3.1 The Contract between you and us is a Deemed Contract where: a) you are an owner or occupier of the Premises; b)we are the registered supplier at the Premises prior to you taking a supply of Energy there; and c) you start to take a supply of Energy at the Premises without having taken any of the actions at clauses 2.4(a) to 2.4(d) to enter into a contract with us or you start to take a supply of Energy after such a contract has ended.
3.2 Where we supply Energy to the Premises under a Deemed Contract, the prices charged for the supply of Energy will be: a) the currently applicable prices under our Direct Debit Saver price plan; or b) where we have notified you that our Monthly Premium price plan applies, the currently applicable prices under that price plan, and these prices are available to you at http://www.sparkenergy.co.uk/tariffs
So, it should be very easy to work out the correct bill yourself using the opening meter reading, and the latest meter reading.
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