Arrrggg, Energy companies!

I'm with Utilita. They were the energy company providing the electricity when I moved in. I was being direct debited just over £300  a month.I live in a small 1 bedroom lounge,kitchen diner. My daughter agreed it was all rather iffy and phoned to try and sort things out for me Got absolutely nowhere. Then they decided more, than a few months later there was a fault re the supply of electricity to this block of flats.It was fixed and electricity(it's all electricity here) bill went right down.No apology.No offer to reduce  the OTT amount I was reckoned to owe, through no fault of mine.

Utilita have call centres outside of the U.K. (which they should not be allowed to do) and my issue is that if a company is offering services to a U.K. customer base, regardless of training or anything else, they must not be allowed to operate call centres for customer support from outside of the U.K. - especially in this day and age, this exposes customers to all manner of online scams and fraud aside from the language and cultural barriers - I’ve the same problem with Virgin Media and O2 mobile - customers should have the legal right to demand that when they make a call to a call centre, they can have on their account notes that they do not want their calls to customer services “landing” outside of the U.K. and to only be directed to a call centre within the U.K. only 

This is something your research on the provider should include to make sure they provide the UK call centers.

I know I did this for my broadband provider as explaining the issues to someone with a tenuous grasp of English was a frustrating experience and the technicalities of how I used my connection was a complicating factor that just made it insufferable.

The onus is on you to choose - if enough people do this then they will change their practices.

The downside is people tend to choose based on price and part of this is because the cheaper companies have outsourced support in another country (even Ireland is another country though - should we exclude them too for being outside the UK?)

You get what you pay for I guess.

I know people in both the public and private renteal sector who aren't allowed or are unable to change providers, for many even telly is piped in from a common arial to all flats.

In some areas of council housing, because of local bye-laws, you don’t have a choice as to being billed monthly, having a prepayment meter or a smart meter, where only a prepayment smart meter is permitted and in some areas, there is only one permitted energy company that council tenants are allowed to use - councils should be doing more to help tenants when dealing with energy companies, perhaps taking up a case on their behalf 

What I’m saying is that a specific law needs to be passed in Parliament (I’m in the U.K.) immediately banning the practice of “outsourcing” customer support service functions outside of the U.K. by these companies, who need to be brought to heel and the only way to do this is by ever more draconian legislation that is properly enforced - India is well known as the scam call capital of the world, as are other countries like the Philippines - it should not be down to customers to research this, that is the job of the U.K. regulators appointed by government for this very purpose - there is a channel on YouTube that does scam-baiting calls to try and recover people’s money and he speaks fluent Hindi as an American in order to catch these scammers, where the Indian government is not doing enough to stop these scammers 

What I’m saying is that a specific law needs to be passed in Parliament (I’m in the U.K.) immediately banning the practice of “outsourcing” customer support service functions outside of the U.K. by these companies, who need to be brought to heel and the only way to do this is by ever more draconian legislation that is properly enforced - India is well known as the scam call capital of the world, as are other countries like the Philippines - it should not be down to customers to research this, that is the job of the U.K. regulators appointed by government for this very purpose - there is a channel on YouTube that does scam-baiting calls to try and recover people’s money and he speaks fluent Hindi as an American in order to catch these scammers, where the Indian government is not doing enough to stop these scammers