Metropol

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.

Pete wrote: ↑Sat 02 Oct, 2021 20.03 https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/ ... f-up-to-80

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

gottago wrote: ↑Fri 29 Oct, 2021 17.18 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.