Community Utilities
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Raise a formal complaint as soon as you encounter issues
I will resonate the comments of fellow reviewers in this platform regarding Community Utilities. I was registered with them automatically when I moved in my development (Dandi) and CU is a company managing all the bills, supposedly to facilitate tenants by issuing one bill for energy, water etc., rather than multiple ones. However, all I have been faced is overpriced bills and blatant ignoring of my questions. Specifically, instead of taking an accurate meter reading when I moved in the flat in April 2024, they estimated charges for April and May. When they took actual readings in June, the charge was 7 times higher than my regular energy consumption. I have been constantly emailing then asking for resolution since July 2024, but they are "still investigating" the issue. I was told that it might have been a meter error and the meter was changed in October; I was also promised that even with the new meter they would be able to calibrate and receive the accurate readings for June and adapt my charges accordingly. We are now in March, nearly a year into my tenancy and the issue has still not been addressed or resolved. I sent an email threatening with a formal complaint, to which I received an automatic response that the complaint will be dealt with within 8 weeks and I would be getting updates on progress every 10 days. At the 10-day mark, I received another automatic response stating that they are "still investigating" and there are no updates for me. Any email I send is met with silence and the customer services team has limited access to the complaint so they are not able to support either. As someone has mentioned in the comments, as CU is a bills management company and not an energy provider, they are not part of the Energy Ombudsman scheme, so they are not able to support either. I wish I had mentioned the word "complaint" in my communications much earlier, as this would have started the process much earlier than my move-out date. As the 8 week deadline is after I will have moved out of the property, I am concerned that I will lose access to my account and will never get a refund for having been overcharged.