I will give bulb there due all most all emails I sent have had a decent outcome. There was a little oddity with the energy voucher (on prepay I get a redeemable voucher for the Post Office), the first came through email & the second via post, when I emailed to ask where it was I got an odd response about updating to a smart meter and informed it was coming via post 20 days after the 1st of the month, I naturally informed CS that a smart meter would be pointless since Octopus was taking over and a bulb meter would be more obsolete than me! Of course I actually meant over my dead body am I having a smart meter & CS updated my records to reflect my voucher by email.
I joined Bulb on their original way of trading, payment by direct debit a month in advance to give them buying power in the market. But with no mobile signal here a smart meter cannot work so I feed the meter reading once a month on the same set day
That may sound vulnerable but in fact it's anything but, since I have always had control over setting the payment level and Bulb have always been excellent.
To illustrate that, I had set my payment a bit high with my much higher winter bills coming up, but then the government introduced the £400 subsidy, leaving the input even higher. That didn't matter since I knew the high and growing balance would all get used up in the current higher winter months.
But Bulb's algorithm was having none of it, mailing me to say they were reducing my payments by over a third, but courteously saying I could still set it myself. I did do just that since their new figure was too low, upping it to an in-between setting which was accepted.
So you can see that I have complete control and Bulb play more than fair.
The only problem is that their algorithm cannot cope with my usage pattern, one which will become very much more common infuture as gas is phased out. I'm all electric, so with only electric heating there's a massive difference between summer and winter monthly usage.
Summer, no heating, salads and less cooking and with all LED lighting my consumption is minimal. Winter with more cooking, plus heating a modern place with vast window areas which lose lots of heat depite gas filled double glazing.
The result is winter bills peaking at four times the lowest Summer ones and their algorithm can't handle the true average Direct Debit without seeing it as far too high in summer and far too low in winter, so wanting to yo-yo my DD at least twice a year.
I've been using a simple solution though. I set the lower summer figure, but just before the first winter bill makes the algorithm paranoid I make a lump sum payment through their system, then repeating that half way through winter according to my usage.
Of course all this will fall apart once Octopus get their tentacles on the Bulb system and I have no idea how Octopus billing works, other than that the direct debit will be automatically transfered.
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