How can you take this so lightly, the BIG 6 as you call them are being investigated for different matters. One way to strengthen for your future growth would be to communicate clearly and fairly and maybe answer questions that are asked from the outset.

Lets hope something is done about this riddle of companies and practices. I can't understand why one business would want to trample all over the small business with outrageous contracts and rates.

I notice today that Ofgem are investigating BES. I am unable to copy and paste the link to my post as I haven't posted 10 or greater. But for all of you who are interested visit the Ofgem home page and search under investigations. I contacted the BES legal team earlier in the week and you can see on posts from BES that they tried to direct me to their forum. I have repeatedly asked for information that is relevant to our case, alas its very slow process!!

Thank you, its a shame it has taken so long and a forum before anyone actually wants to listen.

Thanks for responding to my post I will have a look at your forum later on. Gosh you must have had lots of businesses in court on the 5th of September if you are unable to locate our details. I have today looked at our paperwork at there are some time inaccuracies in my above post . "On our next bill they billed us for 13 days on direct debit at the lower rate and 17 days at the higher rate but they said we had used far more electricity in the off direct debit days, I queried this as I know they couldn't get a reading from our smart meter and I was told its impossible that we have the same usage on a daily basis so I had to pay it. " The above statement is slightly innacurate as this dispute relates to our April bill not the February bill as stated and it was 9 days at the higher off direct debit rate .

Mr Pilley I think that you offer support to your friends is commendable and I say that with all sincerity, what I find difficult to stomach is for over 15 months I have been trying to obtain the contact details of the broker who's agent touted our business and your representatives have denied me this information. It has taken me hours of trawling the internet to discover that they do indeed know the broker. You can argue that my personal conversation with Darren Mccandless is hearsay but the vagueness of the email received from Damien Traynor is indeed deceptive. Thank you for your reply its a shame it takes a forum to get a response.

dx100uk I have an email from a Damien Traynor and he states "I have no contact details for brokers which I imagine Commercial Energy is and if your requesting recordings you will need to do this with the customer service team at BES. I’m pretty certain the only recordings they will hold is the contract recordings, there is no legislation that brokers or suppliers need to keep point of sale recordings to my knowledge. ( I have the original email from Mr Traynor to back this up) sorry if I am breaching any rules on here. Damien Traynor also stated he didn't work for BES as did Darren Mccandless. They may not work for BES but they both know Andy Pilley very well and Lee Qualter who is the director of the Broker known to me as Commercial energy. Darren Mcandless one of the pre disconnection agents even holidays with Mr Pilley. I have a photo with Darren Mccandless, Andy Pilley, Darren Martindale and Lee Qualter all standing together. There are also photos on the internet of Damien Traynor with the odd one here and there. This is an extremely close knit group so no wonder they are hard to penetrate. Our case was also passed to a CDS a company started last year that is registered to the same address in London as many of the other companies mentioned in previous threads. I have kept every email and text message I would suggest to anyone who is having problems with this company to do the same.

BES Customers Gas and Electricity I will try and be as brief as possible with my long winded case. In March of 2013 we purchased a cafe and on takeover decided to stay with the then suppliers "Utility Warehouse". Within 5 days of taking over I took a call from someone who said they were reviewing our gas and electricity prices, I asked if he was from utility warehouse and he replied yes I thought no more of it and duly answered all his questions and stupidly gave all our details ( he knew the previous owners details ). After a run down of costs and not being aware that the deal I already had was better somehow I agreed to a new contract and I thought it was with Utility warehouse. About 3 or 4 days later Barry from Commercial Energy called me again and said we needed to go over a few things, I duly obliged at the end of the call I thought hey I've been duped, I called BES once I'd received an email from them and they explained what I had agreed to. I asked who the agent was and I was told they didn't know. I called again a few days later after a call from Utility warehouse and the young man I spoke to gave me the details but told me he wasn't meant to and I would have trouble getting the contract scrubbed. My husband I were very stressed with the start of a new venture but did try to get out of it to no avail. It was a case of hey ho we will just have to get on with it. When I received the first bill I realised we were tied into a contract until 2017 once again I called them . I was told tough. The bills started coming in and were considerably higher than the previous owners which was strange as we had changed all of the major cooking equipment to gas so no high usage electric griddle etc. I called BES and queried this and they said there could be a fault on the meter and we would have to pay to have it checked. We were not in a position financially to pay anyone to do anything so we just let things continue. By July of 2014 we were getting bills of over £500 per month I cancelled the direct debit because it would have bounced and thought I will pay the bills as and when they come in ( huge mistake the extra costs have just about seen us skint) . In October of last year I started paying them £60.00 a week by standing order as this is roughly what the bills should be. We have ended up paying thousands and eventually put the electricity back on direct debit to try and save ourselves money. It was in Feb the bill went back onto direct debit and we continued to pay the £60 per week to try and clear the debt. We also had a smart meter installed ( which never sent a reading until 3 weeks ago) On our next bill they billed us for 13 days on direct debit at the lower rate and 17 days at the higher rate but they said we had used far more electricity in the off direct debit days, I queried this as I know they couldn't get a reading from our smart meter and I was told its impossible that we have the same usage on a daily basis so I had to pay it. We became so obsessed with the usage we took readings every hour we were open and I emailed them the info. We are open 7 days a week but keep the same opening hours and on monitoring the usage is usually mirrored from week to week. I had a visit one day and we paid BES £1000 over the phone courtesy of my parents and then a week later another £1000. We have continued paying the bills and they did ask for £200 per week on top of our bill at first we managed this but in fairness we've nearly lost our home down to this i had to bring the payments up to date. We have never stopped paying the £60 a week on top of our bill. We have been hounded with up to 10 calls a day on the cafe phone and my mobile, text messages and emails. I eventually asked the staff to say I wasn't in and in fact for a couple of months I was busy with outside catering to try and boost our funds so wasn't available they were called liars they have been given the state of play regarding our bills ( breech of data protection) . We have a great team working for us and even they became afraid to answer the phone, their latest tactic is drop calling and many of the calls are directed through a local exchange to try and trick you into answering. Just when we thought the bill was about clear 3 blokes arrived about 3 weeks ago and informed us they'd come to switch the electricity off and they had a warrant from the local magistrates. We should have been in court on the 5/09/2014, apparently they sent us a letter informing us of the date and time, I can honestly say we wouldn't have missed it for the world if we'd known. Luckily the bailiff was half decent and even he was flabbergasted because disconnection was granted on the grounds we had not paid anything and they'd had no contact with us. Luckily the bailiff was willing to look at all the email we had sent and was annoyed he'd been told that we'd not been paying ( We have bank statements to prove otherwise) We eventually gave him £600 and agreed to pay the remaining amount which we were lead to believe was about £400 ( we have never been given a break down from the court, BES or the bailiff) we have since paid another £180 and another bill and when I asked yesterday for the balance its back to £1400 est. The day they came to disconnect G4S had to change the sim on the meter because they couldn't remotely disconnect or get a reading!!!! For over a year I have asked for recordings of the initial phone calls this has been ignored repeatedly, we eventually received a recording last weekend and funnily enough its for the second conversation with a little bit of clever editing. I have asked for the first recording and I was told they don't have it. The recording I have leaves no doubt that there was a previous phone call so someone has to be able to produce it. I have kept all emails, text messages etc etc. Today we received another letter regarding the gas account demanding £1500, we are refusing to pay this on the grounds our gas bill used to be £80 to £100 per month and could probably accept up to £150 per month we are currently paying £278 per month with no clue as to how they work this out. I have compiled a whole dossier on this corrupt company and all the other companies run by Andy Pilley friends and former employees.

Hi to all I do hope someone wil be aable to help me over the next day or 2, having major issues with MM a log book loan company, will post details when i have received a reply from the webmaster as my first mesages were removed, I had obviously said something i shouldn't. In the mean time i shall see if i can find something relevant on previous threads.

The company must re issue you with a new cheque as it is not your problem it has been stolen and cashed. They must then contact their bank and ak them to investigate as to who has cashed it.