The future of CHOICE Transformer energy switching service

Thank you :slight_smile:

We are very proud of what we were able to do. $1.8M in savings to consumers is nothing to sneeze at. I’m especially proud of the New Things and Transformer teams and the many helpers from elsewhere in CHOICE that combined to deliver something unique – an energy advice service that didn’t take money from retailers and so was able to tell the truth fearlessly and deliver the maximum savings.

The energy companies didn’t make it easy though, and our cost of delivery was higher than the amount we felt we could fairly charge consumers. But we definitely do have ideas to take what we’ve learnt and build something with a business model that can work. If this community has thoughts about where to take it next (they could go beyond the Energy market too!) then we’re all ears.

V.

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Disappointing to hear the news. I am sure that many people would be happy to do the transfer work from one energy supplier to another if provided with a Choice recommendation. Could this work if a lesser subscription fee was charged?

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Thanks for your suggestion. It may also become easier to switch customers between retailers as the consumer data right project progresses.

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This decision is disappointing for many reasons. I feel like the cost of signing up was barely less than we saved through the recommendation to change, especially when a government service already exists in our state; we simply paid money to CHOICE rather than an energy provider.

There’s no detail on how we should now proceed to manage our energy retailer accounts that were set up through CHOICE. Our energy accounts are linked to a choicetransformer.com.au email address to which we have no direct access. What are we supposed to do when the CHOICE Transformer membership ends? Will CHOICE assist with resetting the account to use an email address of our choosing?

Our membership began at the beginning of June, but there was a month’s delay from when we paid our membership fee, so I have no idea when the year’s membership actually ends. How much notice will be given of the closure of the account?

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Thanks for your comments. Our team worked very hard to get this service to work and there we feel some disappointment too at this announcement. Regarding the choicetransformer.com.au email forwarder addresses the procedure is slightly different for each retailer so we’ll be communicating to individual customers by email by this in the coming months. We are calculating all subscription start dates as the day we initiated your first switch, not the day you paid for the service. Again, more details will follow on this by email to individual customers. Thank you again for your support. Rest assured, we are committed to keeping the service live till 30 June.

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Like others, I’m also quite disappointed in this announcement. In my case, we have saved a considerable amount of money after switching with Transformer. I’m with @gilflite in that I’d be happy to do the legwork it would take to switch provider, if only there was a trusted source pointing me in the right direction. I don’t have the time nor the deep industry knowledge required in order to make a confident and informed decision when analysing the current landscape of a myriad offers. Even the 1 July changes you point to don’t obviously suggest how I might make a better decision. I guess what I’m getting at is that I would value (and happily pay for) some type of service that does not leave people like myself totally untethered in the electricity marketplace and at the mercy of impenetrable pricing and dodgy deals.

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We’ll certainly take your suggestions on board. We know energy is a big problem for Australian consumers and we are looking at other ways that CHOICE may engage in this space.

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Thanks for everything. Transformer was the best $99 I’ve ever spent, I’m a heavy user and it saved me more than $100 every month
I’m not a wood duck either, and my pre-tranformer provider appeared to be offering the best deal 6 months earlier, when I used the Victorian Energy Compare (not-for-profit) website. That provider pulled what appeared to be a very clever stunt by being the cheapest by far when I checked, then hiking up the price by a truly massive percentage within months.
It’s really hard to keep pace with the rent-takers and sociopaths that manipulate this industry, and I’m really sorry to hear that they made it too hard for Choice to beat them in this game.
Good luck with whatever you try next.

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thanks for your feedback Roger, yes I think I know the provider you’re talking about - could it have been these guys? https://www.choice.com.au/shopping/shopping-for-services/utilities/articles/sumo-powers-big-rate-increase

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I see their ads all over the internet claiming to be the cheapest.

Their reviews on Product Review really sums them up.

What a bunch of charlatans.

image

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That’s the one exactly. Mine was quite a bit earlier in the year and only weeks after I was ‘baited’.

Naively, I thought that it was a result of a wholesale price increase, but now I realise that their note hypnotised me into that point of view.

Thanks again for your help.

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You’re fortunate to have a choice in providers. I submitted my most recent electricity bill to Transformer in June 2018, the response… “We would love to help you find some electricity savings but we do not service your area of Queensland as it is not a fully deregulated energy market.” :disappointed:

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I sorry to hear the news, it was a great initiative. Is it possible to give the software/database used for calculating the best deal to the open source community? Don’t ask me how to do that, but I’ve read that this is something that organisations do with useful software when it is no longer their core business. Hopefully then it could keep going at least as a manual service.

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Thanks for the suggestion, the software was developed by a partner organisation and I don’t think open sourcing is currently on their roadmap.

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Very sad to see this service discontinued. Was actually hoping that it might be extended to the Gas market which is just as confusing for “joe average”. Great work by the team at CHOICE and looking forward to future initiatives.

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Thank you Choice for at least trying and at best demonstrating what a god awful country we are becoming.

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Hi all,

We’ve partnered with a company called Bill Hero that follows a similar model to Transformer. You can read more about it here.

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After joining and providing all details in late February, BH found significant savings. Unfortunately nothing has come of it as the energy company (one of the big Australians) has still not contacted me, despite me following up with BH in May and again recently.
It looks like I’ve just burned the $99 and all the potential savings.
Have others had similar experiences?

Welcome to the community @icy

If you have not been proactive in dealing with BH, contact them with your experience and ask for a refund if you are not happy, or an extension if you might give them another go. Looking at BH ToS 8, 9 it could be BH or the utility who dropped the ball.

I have not used BH but if the ‘big Australian’ is AGL, my experience with them, now a decade+ old but echoed by many recent reviews across the net, is that they are competitive but incompetent. I was a customer, they sent me a re-up offer at the end of my plan, I accepted it, and they refused to honour it! Does it get worse? Even when AGL is the lowest I still refuse to deal with them.

If not AGL, feel free to post the company so others may be aware of your experience in case they have had a good transfer, or went into a black hole as you apparently did.

You may be aware, but transfers do not take place until the next billing cycle from when the paperwork is submitted. That could be a month or a quarter ahead in most cases. Presuming your paperwork went in during March a reasonable expectation is the switch would have happened by 1 July if not earlier, and as you imply, you should have received account and welcome information by now.

I expect BH are as interested in companies that make their service look bad, as well as a possibility it is their own systems that are the problem.

Please let us know how you go.

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