Bristol Energy Switching Offer

Interested in an energy provider not named after Edison’s invention, that has amazing customer service and a switching offer where you’re giving back to the community instead of your own purse?

I just saw in my email today, that Bristol Energy has an offer where if you use the code ‘CARING’ when you switch, they’ll donate £30 to the Caring homeless shelter in Bristol. £15 for each fuel.

I have no connection to Bristol Energy and don’t benefit from this offer in any way, I just thought it might interest some people. I’ve been with them since November, and like Monzo they’ve been a shining example of customer service done really, really right. Two thumbs up!

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Worth us reaching out to them for partnership discussions? Long term, with our marketplace vision we see customer support as being pretty key to that. For example, if we have 5 energy suppliers in the marketplace, we need a system of how we rate and recommend them, otherwise you end up with a race to the bottom. Customer service would be a key metric for us in that regard.

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I definitely think so! The customer service has been really good to me, including helping me sort out the mess British Gas made of my energy supply. I like the social mission as well (and I’m on a green tariff, I do wish all their tariffs were green tho… they’re not).

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I’ve put a note in our partnerships channel and perhaps we can reach out to them :grinning:

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They are not exactly doing well:

I wish them well, seeing that. As a customer they’ve been absolutely fantastic, hopefully they get their business model sorted out enough to maintain that long-term.

That can be a problem with any new company coming on to the market doing things better, but struggling with market realities. See the incredible cost Monzo’s foreign ATM use.

I see, as a customer, a lot of similarities in the service both companies offer me. I wish them both luck in maintaining it whilst making business models work for them. You, sadly, can’t burn through investment money (whether it be from VCs or a city council) forever; no matter how great your service is.

I’ll also add this is nothing too unique at all. Lots of new companies we love are burning through eye-watering amounts of money. There are a few results possible:

  • They somehow balance it all and make it work long term (this is the ideal).
  • They fail and we need to shop around as consumers (very unlikely for a bank or for a council owned energy supplier).
  • They get bought by a bigger fish who can absorb that loss and those customers. This, so often, results in a drop in service quality and makes one want to shop around. It can work out tho. The purchase of ING Direct in the US by Capital One actually turned out great - Capital One kept what was great about ING Direct and added their own benefits too!
  • Something else I’m missing?

The best we can do is give these companies doing things right our business and hope for the first outcome as often as possible!

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