Two energy suppliers are understood to have blocked at least 1,600 switches from Omni Energy after the small supplier confirmed it was seeking to offload customers.
The retailer had earlier this week issued a notice to its around 10,000 customers warning it may cease trading “before the end of November”, adding that it had lined up a “switching partner” that is ready to transfer them to another supplier.
Supplier licence conditions stipulate that retailers cannot switch consumers without their consent, unless the supplier sells some or all of its customer book to another as part of a trade sale.
Utility Week understands that Ofgem has since spoken to Omni Energy and that the supplier is no longer switching customers away. Customers who object to the switch can either contact Omni or their new supplier and cancel it.
Scottish Power is understood to have prevented around 1,600 Omni customers being transferred to its own customer books, whilst Bulb is also understood to have blocked a number of potentially non-consensual switches.
Omni Energy specialises in supplying prepayment meter customers and an industry source told Utility Week that Bulb and Scottish Power may have been chosen as they are offering pay-as-you-go energy deals on their websites.
A Scottish Power spokesperson said: “We’re aware of the apparent switching of Omni Energy customers to other suppliers, including Scottish Power, and taking appropriate action to minimise the impact on affected customers. Ofgem has been advised of this.”
The Guardian quoted a source familiar with Omni’s actions as saying senior executives at the company had been switching hundreds of customers at a time, focussing on those with the highest energy consumption.
Describing the situation as an “omnishambles”, an industry source told the paper they were “utterly speechless” at the “outrageous” behaviour, which they suggested may contravene data protection laws.
A spokesperson for Omni Energy acknowledged that the firm “may have” breached GDPR rules but said it had “acted in good faith” and has now contacted all customers to get their consent to transfer them to another supplier.
“We have always acted in the best interest of our customers and wanted to ensure that they do not have any metering issues during the transition period,” they told The Guardian. “We decided to use in-house resources rather than a third-party switching partner to complete this.
“We have had a lot of positive feedback to this email and the service that we have provided to our loyal customers. We have today provided an update to our customers that no switch will complete without their confirmation.
“It is a very difficult time for Omni Energy and we have had to make several redundancies in the past weeks as we have made efforts to restructure our business. We are in active dialogue with Ofgem.”
So far this year 12 companies have exited the market via the SoLR process following soaring wholesale costs.
Most recently, the market saw a triple supplier failure with the exit of Igloo, Symbio and Enstroga Energy.