[Evie88]

Concerns about Utilita "neglecting" its customers align with a history of official warnings and penalties from the energy regulator Ofgem and consistently low customer service ratings from consumer groups like Citizens Advice. The company has faced specific enforcement actions for failing vulnerable customers and payment issues.

[Shel12]

@Evie88 not good is it

[CovalentBondsAreBest]

They appear to have designed this year's process to cause maximum pain to the often vulnerable customers who are receiving these payments. With chagnes to PowerUps caps, debt repayments ignoring recovery rates, changes to payment dates etc they appear to have opted for maximum disruption.

If someone had deliberately set out to design the process to cause the most harm, while still broadly sitting within the schemes rules, this is what it would have looked like. I'm going to be charitable though and say it's incompetence, not malice, that's driving them though.

I can only assume the regulator at some point last year told them to reduce the amount of debt their customers have, and this is the approach they thought was best. A rushed, ill-planned, painful process changed at the last minute, that's proven to be problematic both in terms of how it's being implemented and its effect on its customers.

I'd advise you to move from Utilita at your earliest opportunity, if you can, because there are two options here, either:

1. They intentionally changed things shortly before they normally start paying out and this was genuinely what they thought was the best way to do it, or,
2. They made those changes anyway, didn't even think of the effect it would have on their customers and don't understand the changes to the way it's worked in the past, the delays, miscommunications and uncertainty have a genuine and significant effect on budgets.

Either way, they're not the friend of the vulnerable customer and who knows what they'll come up with next year for us.

It didn't have to be like this of course... but they chose it. Remember that. They know they have a lot of vulnerable customers, and this is how they chose to make their implementation of the scheme work.