Not exactly a scam, but it is "taking advantage"

Has anyone else tried to close an unwanted sign-up with Utilities Warehouse? It is like trying to escape from quicksand.

An elderly relative was phoned by someone who told her how she would save money by signing up with UW to both power supply and broadband and telephone. As her phone number is on the Telephone Preference List she should not be receiving sales or marketing calls at all, but since UW's sales force consists of their existing customers on commission (they get £250 for every sign-on, plus a percentage of their monthly bill) perhaps not everyone was aware that they should check the TP list every three months if they were doing telephone cold calling.

She must have been persuaded by the sales talk, but later had second thoughts and phoned them to cancel (It was within the 14 cooling-off days) They cancelled the broadband and phone, but told her she had to phone another number (her old supplier, Shell) to cancel the dual power account. She tried this, but was bamboozled by the complicated menu and the requests for a lot of security stuff and other details.

Then, on the last day of the 14 days, she phoned me for advice. I dug a bit deeper than their official reviews (even Martin Lewis had concentrated on their very slightly cheaper prices) and found a deep vein of people who had problems that were unsolved after months, There followed a series of communications between her, me, UW and Shell. She asked them to close her account, cancelled her Direct Debit and we asked Shell to restart her account there

Four weeks later, Shell has been excellent in explaining how to get reconnected with them, in doing all the things their end to make it happen (there is a system where a new supplier contacts the old supplier to transfer the account, in this case Shell contacting UW to retransfer back again. UW had already done this smartly when it meant that the account came to them) Meanwhile UW has sent Shell a letter saying they have a valid contract with her. To her they have sent a letter confirming that they were her supplier from exactly the 14-day cooling-off point, and another telling her how much she would be paying, and that her DD had been cancelled, but not mentioning that her contract has been cancelled as she wished or that she had been reconnected to Shell.

Utilities Warehouse are either very slow to inform customers of important changes to their accounts (like getting it closed!!!) or they are very unwilling to let go of customers once they get them signed up. They are not careful about never selling or marketing things over the phone to people whose numbers are on the telephone preference scheme either. This chaos should never have started.