Energy bills: How spanked will YOU get?

[Martin Phillp]

Avro customers are being moved to Octopus.

[scottishtv]

This is an excerpt from a longer piece in last week's Times about Avro Energy:

Jake Brown, a 27-year-old former non-league footballer, founded Avro Energy in 2014 while studying law at Birmingham University. His father Andrew, 57, joined the business in 2017.

The pair do not appear to have invested any of their own money in the company, which has been financed by the advance fees paid by customers.

Jake and his father each own half the shares in Avro Group, the holding company for a string of businesses. Accounts for [these] associated companies show that Avro Energy provided a £830,000 unsecured, interest-free loan to Berkeley Swiss Limited, a construction company controlled by Brown and his father.

Avro Energy also records £2.25 million in management charges for an advertising agency called Sendito Marketing, owned by the Browns. A further £163,656 of loans to the pair are recorded in the most recent accounts.

One expert said that Avro Energy appeared to have funded its losses by “stretching” the advance payments made by customers. “This creates a perverse incentive whereby energy companies are incentivised to sell at increasingly negative margins,” the expert said.

Avro Energy was awarded the uSwitch best value for money award in 2019 and recorded a 144 per cent rise in customer numbers. Its accounts state that it ran a hedging strategy to cope with changes in energy prices. Jake Brown did not respond to requests for comment.

[Martin Phillp]

Enstroga, Igloo Energy and Symbio Energy have gone bust.

[Pete]

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/ ... f-up-to-80

Bulb engaging in some significant spanking of their remaining customers it would seem

[Martin Phillp]

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/ ... f-up-to-80

Bulb engaging in some significant spanking of their remaining customers it would seem

And with that news earlier this month, Bulb is set to go into administration.

[gottago]

Richard Herring will be gutted. He'd push their free recommendation credit on his podcast all the time netting him £50 of credit each time someone signed up (I think I did this through him). I went on a date with someone who worked at Bulb HQ and said that Richard had about £30k in account credit.

[Alan de Robson]

I'm getting well and truly spanked.

I signed up to Outfox the Market at just over £100 a month about a year ago.

Seems like every other month they revise the direct debit upwards and it's now £205 a month.

With that and potential interest rate rises, I could be in a bit of a hole in 6 months' time.

[WillPS]

Richard Herring will be gutted. He'd push their free recommendation credit on his podcast all the time netting him £50 of credit each time someone signed up (I think I did this through him). I went on a date with someone who worked at Bulb HQ and said that Richard had about £30k in account credit.

His account credit is protected whatever happens to Bulb. In the event of SoLR (unlikely) the cost of covering the 'in credit' balance is mutualised over all suppliers, so indirectly that £30k credit will paid for by anybody paying an energy bill. In the more likely event that they enter 'special administration'... well I don't know how it's covered but I presume it amounts to being every fucker who ends up absorbing it.

Suppliers incentivising referrals with account credits are likely to be one of the things which are outlawed once the dust settles (correctly, IMV).

[bilky asko]

Going by Richard Herring's tweets on the matter, the Bulb credit is withdrawable, and he may well have already done so.

[Martin Phillp]

Omni Energy, MA Energy and Zebra Power are the latest small scale utility companies to close.

[Martin Phillp]

Bulb is "on the brink of collapse"

https://news.sky.com/story/bulb-on-brin ... r-12475565