Are you burning your money? SSE, one of the big six energy companies, has set aside £5 million to compensate customers who were misled by doorstep sellers in that period and changed to SSE from their existing energy supplier.
SSE has form in doorstep mis-sales – literally. In May 2011 it was found guilty at Guildford Crown Court of misleading thousands of customers after its doorstep sales team was told to say they had ‘a printout of energy customers who may be paying an expensive tariff’ and claiming ‘you may be one of them’. The script worked – 800,000 people signed up. But it was a lie. The printout did not exist and the sales team knew nothing about the customer’s energy use. These sales were made before October 2009 and are being dealt with separately.
After the case SSE insisted its sales process was "fair and responsible" and is appealing. But in July it stopped door to door sales and now it has introduced its ‘household energy guarantee’ to compensate anyone who was sold SSE energy on the doorstep and was given inaccurate information or was misled.
SSE claims that 400,000 people changed between October 2009 and July 2011. If they shared the £5 million equally that would be just £12.50 each – about 1% of a typical annual energy bill. SSE probably hopes most won’t bother to claim. But if you swapped supplier to SSE in that time it is worth doing so. Whatever the compensation it is worth having – if you found a tenner in an unwashed garment you would be thrilled! And it could be a lot more in some cases.
All the big six energy supplier used to send their sales teams out to compete with the wide boys and con men who try to get us to buy things at the front door. All but one of the big six have now stopped, though some of the smaller ones still get new customers in this way.
Now that SSE has offered compensation, anyone who swapped to any supplier as a result of a doorstep sale should write to their new supplier to say they were not given adequate information, that the resulting savings have not materialised and they want compensation. It may be worth a small discount off your winter bill.