An EPC firm has been reported to the advertising watchdog after its website showed as its headquarters the address of a bungalow in Poole, Dorset, alongside a picture of a building said to be in Reading.
Both the address and the photograph were removed from the NextDayEPC website after EAT’s story last week. The identical details were removed from a second site, www.assessordirect.co.uk
However, a screengrab has been sent by Paul Walker, of the Institute of Domestic Energy Assessors, to the Advertising Standards Authority, which has started investigating.
Meanwhile, attempts by Walker and others, including EAT, to discover the real whereabouts of NextDayEPC have drawn a blank.
NextDayEPC is running an auction system whereby DEAs can bid to do an EPC for £39.95. However, they have to pay £9.95 first to NextDayEPC for the customer details. The customer then pays the fee direct to the DEA. Payment could be made via PayPal.
One DEA who is owed money by the firm said the only name at the firm he could be sure of was a Warren Wade, who held the bank account through PayPal. Otherwise, he had only been given first names.
In an unsigned email, he was told: “The situation has been explained to you by Lee in our customer services department. We do not have access to the funds at present as these are being held for a period of time.
“As soon as these funds are released to us, we will be in a position to settle your invoices.”
When EAT emailed Warren Wade at NextDayEPC, asking him to contact us as we wanted to give the firm right of reply, we received a reply from office manager Robert Patterson.
The email said: “Although a payment was sent to Mr Warren Wade this was in actual fact an error. Our Indian based developers made an error when integrating the PayPal payment method into our website and instead of using our PayPal user ID they used the PayPal ID of one of their other Australian based clients. As I am sure you can appreciate, this was very embarrassing for both ourselves and our development team. We realised the error almost as soon as it happened and the correct PayPal user ID was updated.”
The email added: “For your information, NextDayEPC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Global Energy Awareness and is not privately owned by any single individual.”
However, when EAT checked at Companies House yesterday, we found that the name Global Energy Awareness had not been registered, and the name was still available.
We once again invited NextDayEPC to contact us, and to give us their address, but have not received a response.
Meanwhile, Paul Walker has also heard from Mr Patterson, who put the blame fairly and squarely on the “unprofessionalism of some DEAs working within this ill-conceived industry”.
The email said: “This has caused us no end of problems and have been wholly responsible for the position we currently find ourselves in.”
It added that the DEAs’ “behaviour has put a strain on our resources, and as a result, the settlement of invoices will take longer than we initially anticipated”.
Walker also asked for the actual company address, but this did not receive a reply. Walker claims to have details of several DEAs who are owed money and knows of instances where the EPC itself never materialised.
Chris Whatcott, who previously ran a firm called Express-EPC which was also said to have owed DEAs money, has strenuously denied having anything to do with either NextDayEPC or www.assessordirect.co.uk
At Express-EPC, he also blamed DEAs for unprofessional behaviour and said that it was largely their fault that they hadn’t been paid, as he was having to spend time dealing with their actions rather than processing payments.
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Comments
"If every one did there own marketing and refused panel work there would be no panels and the general price, and service to the customer would be better."
I don't agree this would be the case. Larger businesses have more resource and investment potential and thus can be more innovative in the clients interest along with supporting more consistent levels of customer service.
There are some very good panel style providers out in the market which aim to keep moving the industry forwards by centralising a host of services for the clients benefit and always looking into the future.
Well said Nick
I cannot believe the naivety of you DEA’s.
a) Always check out a company before you deal with them. If you cannot find their address walk away. Google them and phone or email them first and if you are not happy take it further.
b) You guys are responsible for driving down the price of an EPC.
c) You can stick out for as high a price as you wish. If you don’t get paid it makes no difference.
d) Don’t work for panels EVER. Ask surveyors or solicitors. They went down that route and now they are working for peanuts. If every one did there own marketing and refused panel work there would be no panels and the general price, and service to the customer would be better.
Nick.
John, come on, more fool you. Why would you carryout an EPC for under £40. You will never make a living this way. The only way to stop these clowns is to stand firm on your fee level. min £65.
Copy of the email they send:
****This is a GUARANTEED order and not a lead*****
We have spoken to this customer and they have confirmed their order for an EPC through our company. Although we offer our EPC's without an upfront payment, we do impose a £20 cancellation charge to the customer. We do this so you have the confidence that this is a confirmed order and not a lead without any guarantee of work.
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Dear DEA,
Please find the following payment instructions for a confirmed order. As soon as you have made payment for this introduction, the contact details for the customer will be sent to you. You will collect payment for your work from the customer on the day of the appointment. The amount the customer will pay you on the day of the appointment is: £39.95.
You have 18 hours to make the bank transfer before the order that currently falls under your area is assigned to another DEA.
Please ensure that the introduction fee amount of £9.95 is transferred into the following account as soon as possible.
The bank details are as follows:
Account Name: NextDayEPC
Account Number: 5 2 8 6 9 6 3 6
Sort Code: 60-14-10
Amount to Pay: £9.95
Order Reference: ND_24925_1660
This information is also available from within your control panel under the section called Buy Confirmed Leads.
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IMPORTANT NOTICE
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If your bank doesn't use the 'Faster Payments' system, or the money is sent via BACs, it will take around three days to arrive in our account and can result in delays with sending the customer contact details to you.
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If your bank doesn’t use ‘Faster Payments’, or the money is sent via BACs, it should take around three days to arrive.
Regards
NextDayEPC
I undertook 4 EPCs for Express EPC in June/July 2010, fulfilling each instruction within 2 days. I stopped when I realised payment was not forthcoming. Frequent emails requesting were answered only by rants about system problems, the hassle other DEAs were giving etc.
Folk running these businesses have sought actively to conceal their identities so it appears they did not have honest intentions from the outset.
There are a substantial number of EPC panels serving a very fractured market. No surprise that a few scams such as these survive a few months when there are hungry DEAs around!.