ISupply Energy Consumer Warning - Never Put Your Account Into Credit!

ConsumerWatch / Household Bills Apr 13, 2018 - 06:40 AM GMT

ISupply Energy is one of many small gas and electricity suppliers to UK customers at generally competitive prices. Unfortunately they are able to achieve their competitive prices through having far less overheads in terms of systems in place to manage their customer accounts. I say unfortunately for when things go wrong then communicating with the likes of Isupply energy is literally like talking to a brick wall as has been my experience over the past 18 months as an electricity customer.

So why I am not happy if their electricity prices are competitive against the likes of the bigger players such as NPower, British Gas and Scottish Energy?

Well I am sure many customers out there will like myself from time to time tend to put their accounts into credit to manage budgets under the impression that the energy supplier will then not take further direct debit payments until the credit balance has been exhausted. This has been my experience to date with not just the traditional energy suppliers but the same holds true with the likes of the mobile and broadband suppliers amongst other utilities.

However the same is not so with Isupply Energy. After apparently making the mistake of making payments by debit cards which is one of the options given on how to pay your bill, I soon discovered that ISupply Energy still continued to take the full monthly amounts as billed each quarter, regardless of any large credit balance on account and therefore some 18 months ago I requested that ISupply Energy vary the direct debit amount so as to reduce the large credit balance on account which whilst ISupply promised to do never materialised.

Therefore 6 months ago I requested a refund of the credit balance which again turned out to be futile exercise of talking to the Isupply Energy brick wall where it would go like this -

1. I request a refund of the credit balance

2. Isupply request an upto date meter reading

3. Send ISupply an upto date meter reading.

4. Several weeks pass and nothing happens.

And so I repeated the process of talking the Isupply energy brick wall again and again as the following messages illustrate:

27th Oct 2016

Can you set my direct debit to £40 per month as I have been paying by debt card also so now have a large credit balance of £344.23

Thanks

Nadeem Walayat

28th Oct 2016

Dear Mr. Walayat,

Thank you for your message.

For us to recalculate your direct debits, we require your new contract to be within its second month, and need 2 sets of meter readings within the new contract period.

A recalculation of your direct debit can be done through the “direct debit status” section of your online account. Alternatively, once the final statement for your previous contract has been generated, we will be happy to issue a refund on request, providing an up to date reading is provided before the start of the new contract to ensure the accuracy of your final statement.

Kind regards

iSupply Energy

31st Oct 2016 - Meter Readings Supplied.

21st Nov 2016 - Meter Readings Supplied.

.......

27th Oct 2017

My account is £343 in credit, can you return this payment to me to my DD account as the direct debit is never recalculated to reflect the large credit balance.

Thanks

Nadeem Walayat

31st Oct 2017 - Meter Readings Supplied.

1st Nov 2017

Dear Mr Walayat,

Thank you for your earlier message and apologies for the delay in response.

For us to process a refund on your electric account should your account be in credit, we will need to wait for your most up to date statement to be produced. This statement is due for the 30/10/2017 (please allow our billing team few more days to make this available on your online account). Once this is produced and based on the information on the statement, should your account be in credit with us, that credit will be refunded.

We hope this answers your query and we apologise for any inconvenience caused.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Kind Regards,

OJ.

iSupplyEnergy Customer Support

6th Jan 2018 - Meter Readings Supplied.

16/1/2018

What happened to the refund?

The account is about £350 in credit.

Thanks

Nadeem

23rd Jan 2018

Dear Mr Walayat

Thank you for your message.

I would like to make you aware that your energy account will need to be billed to date to actual meter readings before we can arrange for any remaining credit to be refunded to you.

If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact us again.

Regards

ISupplyEnergy Customer Support

5th Feb 2018 - Meter Readings Supplied.

5/2/18

I've sent an upto date meter readings, so now refund the credit balance of about £354.

Thanks

Nadeem W.

13/2/18

Dear Mr Walayat

Thank you for your message.

As previously advised your account will need to be billed to date to actual meter readings before iSupplyEnegry can arrange for any remaining credit to be refunded to you, I can confirm that your next energy statement is due to be generated on 30th April 2018.

Alternatively, I can arrange for a manual calculation of your current balance to be carried out and we can then a arrange for refund payment to be processed if necessary, please confirm how you would like to proceed.

If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact us again.

Regards

iSupplyEnergy Customer Support

13th Feb 2018

Yes to do a manual calc because isupply have been repeating the mantra of having to calc on x date for OVER A YEAR!. NOTHING happens! Instead the credit balance keeps getting rolled over, so yes do the manual calc asap.

Thanks!

Nadeem Walayat

2/3/18

Dear Mr Walayat,

Thank you for your message I apologise for the delayed response.

To allow us to manually calculate your balance we need an up to date meter reading which will validate. Please submit a meter reading and we shall calculate your balance.

I hope this resolves your query, however, if you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind Regards

Charlie

Customer Service

iSupplyEnergy

3rd March - Meter Readings Supplied.

21/3/18

So what happened to the refund?

21/3/18

Dear Mr Walayat

Thank you for your message

We will be dealing with your message as soon as we can. You will receive an e-mail to let you know you have a new message waiting in your online account messaging service once we have replied.

In the meantime please check our FAQs to see if the answer you are looking for is there.

Thank you for choosing iSupplyEnergy.

Kind Regards

iSupplyEnergy Customer Support Team

....

So customers need to be aware that there is price to pay for when entering into contracts with small energy providers such as ISupply Energy in that their systems in terms of dealing with customers are less robust than that of the larger suppliers, as they are unable to handle something that is usually taken for granted i.e. varying direct debits to take into account credit balances or fulfilling promises made to customers to refund large credit balances which as of writing stands at £513.78 for just an electricity account! So if you are an ISupply Energy customer DO NOT PUT YOUR ACCOUNT INTO CREDIT BY MAKING PAYMENTS BY DEBIT CARDs as my experience has been that it is impossible to utilise the credit balance or get it refunded as repeated promises to refund have so far FAILED to materialise.

By Nadeem Walayat

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk

Nadeem Walayat has over 30 years experience of trading derivatives, portfolio management and analysing the financial markets, including one of few who both anticipated and Beat the 1987 Crash. Nadeem's forward looking analysis focuses on UK inflation, economy, interest rates and housing market. He is the author of five ebook's in the The Inflation Mega-Trend and Stocks Stealth Bull Market series that can be downloaded for Free.

Nadeem is the Editor of The Market Oracle, a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication that presents in-depth analysis from over 1000 experienced analysts on a range of views of the probable direction of the financial markets, thus enabling our readers to arrive at an informed opinion on future market direction. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk

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