Why I’m Leaving Airtricity
April 12, 2011 at 8:44 am
When the electricity market became deregulated, I was one of the first to investigate my options. I like a bargain me, and I jumped ship from ESB to Airtricity. Now almost 2 years on, I’m jumping back again. Why?
Because of the worst customer service I’ve ever experienced
- Worse than eircom when it first started selling broadband back in 2003 and it didn’t really know what it was doing? Yes
- Worse than snooty British banks before they all exported their customer service to India? Yes
- Worse than Westwoods Gym (joint holder of the Worst Customer Service In Ireland award)? Yes… mmmm well nearly
I’m actually the best kind of customer for electricity
I quite like having electricity and all the things it lets me do of a dark night. I’m also one of these organised types who checks to see that direct debits have left my account as they should. And yes, for certain companies I will sign a direct debit and give them access to grab an unfixed amount from my personal cash. I believe that companies are valued based on the number of direct debit mandates they’ve got. (Westwoods is a case in point – they grab it from you on first flush… then kind of ignore ya… )
So what happened with Airtricity?
- I moved house in August – the house I was moving into was already an Airtricity customer. I asked to get my name put onto the account. I didn’t hear from them, never received a bill. Knowing that I wouldn’t be lucky enough to get free electricity, I telephoned Airtricity some 5-7 times between September and Christmas to try and sort this out.
- During the week of the “second snow”, I managed to get a person who was able to tell me how much was owing on the account. Quite a hit just before Christmas, so I negotiated to pay them in 2 installments in the new year. After all, it was their fault that I hadn’t been billed.
- While I wasn’t able to view my own account online, they had managed to give me online access to view someone else’s account though.
- I’ve paid the two installments and just last month was the first month of paying just the regular usage amount. The money was in the bill paying account all ready to go. And it didn’t go. I kept an eye on it, and two weeks later, it still didn’t go. Yesterday a series of events happened that just pushed me over into “I”m taking my business away” mode.
- I received a snotty letter in the post saying my account was overdue and if I didn’t pay it, there’d be steps taken….
- I also received an email telling me I “only had 4 days left” in which to submit my meter reading
- Being the good customer that I am, I logged on to submit said meter reading and I couldn’t get into the website. The password retrieval wouldn’t work for me – it said there was no account under my name!!!
- Then I telephoned to try and sort things out, and their very unprofessional message which sounded like it was recorded by “Nicola the nice intern” said that they were very busy in customer service right now and could I please call back!! No “we’ll take your number and call you back”. Not enough staff. This does make a change however from the usual recorded announcements asking “have you made the switch yet?”… repeated over and over and over while you’re waiting for someone to take your call… the voice slowly spells..out… the… website address… it’s extremely annoying to be sold to when you’re on hold for a customer service issue.
So I tweeted about how I have decided to leave Airtricity
And guess what? Airtricity have come on and offered to help me!! Isn’t Twitter an amazing tool for getting attention?
Not only that, but ESB Electric Ireland have started to follow me.
Interesting if you look at Airtricity on Twitter, they use it about once every couple of days. They’ve gone to the trouble of having an elaborate ‘official tweeters’ set-up, but they’re not even using it properly. It’s a smashing idea to use Twitter to deal with customer service issues (especially when you’ve not got a functioning phone line) but if you’re going to do, do it right. Looks like Airtricity might be suffering from the same problem Bord Gais had – where there appears to be no senior buy-in to Twitter so it’s not really used as it could.
Well Airtricity – the answer is “no”.
It’s too late. I’m one of your earliest customers, I’ve been patient, and you’ve failed miserably. If you spent less money on door-to-door salespeople and slightly more on a working phone and website service, you’d have me for life.
Now how do I submit my final meter reading to you – by carrier pigeon?
Tags: Airtricity, Airtricity fail
What The Big Switch & Airtricity Don’t Advertise
April 22, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Yesterday I posted about how Airtricity and how they take €200 off new customers at sign up. I was a bit miffed about that, so I looked to the Big Switch.
As there is no information about customer entry fees on the Big Switch website either, I telephoned and found out that Bord Gais Energy also charge a switching fee. In fact, they have a matrix that helps them determine what that fee should be.
- If you’re already a Bord Gais customer and you are a tenant – you pay €100
- If you’re already a Bord Gais customer you’re a tenant living at your address less than 14 months – you pay €200
- If you’re a home owner living at your home less than 14 months – you pay €200.
The reason they say is because tenants have a habit of skipping off without paying their electricity bills. Fair enough. But what about a new home owner already beleagured with multiple costs? They’re hardly going to skip off.
- How long does Bord Gais get to sit on your money? 6 – 7 bills.
- That’s about 14 months of interest-free cash from you. Nice one.
Now this is all regular business practice I’m told.
But what I find highly irregular is the fact that Bord Gais do not advertise any of this on their website.
The Big Switch says nothing, nowhere, not even in the terms and conditions which I read. Nor does the Bord Gais mothership site. The first time you find out about this fee is when you’ve already done the switch (or so you thought) and you get a demanding letter in the post.
This is not how we do things on the web.
We give people full information as early as possible – so as not to waste their time and piss them off. Good sites show the full price (including shipping) as early as possible because that is the way things are done.
I take issue with Web Factory again because they ought to know this. OK, maybe they were a bit afraid to bring it up with their important client Bord Gais? But hey, the guys at Bord Gais ought to know this. They’re currently shortlisted as best internet marketers in the Net Visionary Awards. Is this how you’d expect such esteemed people to behave?
Either way people, if you are planning on switching from ESB to either Bord Gais or Airtricity, you WILL have to pay for the privilege if you don’t want to give away your bank account direct debit details. Suddenly big fat utility co ESB looks more attractive….
Tags: Airtricity, Bord Gais Networks, ESB, The Big Switch
What I Don’t Like About Airtricity
April 21, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Their customer entry fee of €300.
I decided to go the green route and chose Airtricity as my electricity supplier. I felt noble as I passed over the 1.26 cent saving I could have gotten with Bord Gais.
But a big fail for the Airtricity website – and I’ll be interested to see if they are half as switched on as their newest competitors in their response to this.
I filled in all the required details, got all my bits of paper together for the MPRN number, even took a meter reading, then I got to the last stage “how do I wish to pay”. I don’t like giving companies I don’t know free reign to grab what they want out of my bank account, so the direct debit route was a no-no. But Airtricity obviously don’t like giving service to customers they don’t know either – because they demand a €300 deposit off me in order to become a customer.
And the language? Who wrote that?
They will give me back my deposit ‘in due course’. What is that about? Why don’t they communicate clearly why they are asking for a deposit and when I will get it back. If they stated at one of the earlier steps that they would be making this charge and why, I would have continued. But they didn’t. So now me and my huge electricity habit have pushed off.
