Ok, so this is starting to get a bit daft now – there are so many people coming out the woodwork that have been scammed by BES Utilities, so to assist you direct your BES Utilities complaints to the right department, we have created this handy form.
Your BES Utilities Complaints are sent directly to Joel Chapman of BES Utilities, The Enforcement team at Ofgem, a team of Lawyers working on the case and also ourselves.
And as if like magic, another BES Utilities complaint lands on our door…
Hi Joel,
Oh wow Joel Chapman of BES Utilities, you must be regretting taking this job on!
I write to you with a serious complaint I have regarding the mis-selling of BES by a broker you use.
Another one, exactly the same approach to the scam!
I received a courtesy call from Jane at ‘electricity & gas renewals’ claiming to be an advisor of the utilities broker I have always used. She could tell me that I was going into ‘out of contract rates’ and urged me to commit to a new price plan or I would be paying very high rates for gas.
The technical mumbo jumbo they use is confusing to anyone new to commercial energy and there are so many differences when comparing the commercial and domestic worlds it isn’t surprising when something like this seems to work totally differently.
I was told that BES would be best as they offer a variable rate and as her words were “gas is only coming down in price” this would be the option for me. Out of sheer panic and lack of expertise in the energy market I agreed to go ahead with the call to confirm.
There we go, exactly the same as us. Didn’t know any different + a honest disposition = susceptible to evil scamming salespeople.
I was rushed through the sales process and also rushed through the comfort call only to receive a call from my legitimate broker 10 minutes later. He confirmed I had been scammed into believing I was talking to them and also mis sold regarding gas rates.
To be honest from memory it was very quickly after we signed up when we realised something was up. As soon as there is a contract in place the pain starts though 
As soon as this came to light I called your office (within an hour of the call) and tried to cancel. As expected I was told the recording of my conversation wouldn’t come through until the next day so nothing could be done until then. I called again later that evening as I wanted this cancelled before BES spent any admin time/expense yourself but was once again told nothing BES could do.
Sounds familiar. Ignore, get the supply moved, “oh sorry now its too late give me all your money”
I didn’t hear back but a welcome pack arrived so I assumed my situation wasn’t taken seriously and wrote with complaint to BES instead. I am still in conversation with Chelsey but pretty much getting no where.
I believe I have also liaised with Chelsea from BES Utilities, it must be horrible to have your personal name dragged through the mud due to the underhand and illegal tactics enforced by your employers.
You have obviously been unable to obtain recordings of my conversation with the broker when she clearly told me gas prices would only fall and actually repeated this to me several days later when she called me again to sell me electricity! It will be very clear from the referral who I spoke to as she only gave me her name as Jane.
Not heard this “Jane” mentioned before, a high turnaround of staff doesn’t surprise me though.
I have also spoke to Eon (my current supplier) who have confirmed they had no LOA (Letter of Authority) on my account from the broker or BES and that they didn’t receive this until the day after I called you to cancel.
So this individual managed to call up and request their mis-sold contract was voided, before BES Utilities had actually started moving anything to them? Yet BES Utilities STILL started moving the supply across?
I stress once more that I do not wish to go ahead with any change over of my gas and request you cancel the verbal recording you hold as a contract, forthwith.
There needs to be some serious change in the way this market is run, I’ve personally moved house loads of times and we even own the house we live in now – yet i’ve never personally had this kind of experience so I don’t see why it should be allowed in the commercial sector.
I hope this person manages to get rid of BES Utilities before they even get started – as if you let a few months pass you can be out of pocket to the sum of £1000 even if you use as little as £70 worth of energy a month.
If you’ve had a BES Utilities Horror Story and would like to share it then please comment below or fill out the contact form and ill get your story published!
Well well well…. due to the popularity of some of the BES Utilities posts on here i’m starting to hear from more and more people who are having problems with BES Utilities – it seems they keep duping more and more people and seem to be completely ignorant to the fact the techniques they are using to get customers are unfair and in some cases illegal.
Here is another BES Utilities related nightmare;
Dear Mr. Chapman,
Surely Joel Chapman from BES Utilities is getting sick of these kind of complaints by now?!
I am emailing you to make a complaint regarding the mis-selling of our contract with BES utilities for our electricity supply at [address removed]
Wait, have I posted this before? Nope. They just keep scamming more and more people the same way!
My husband took over the tenancy on 4th November 2014. The owners had their own broker to help tenants deal with their utility services, and having signed up we were expecting a call from their brokerage company. When we received a call to discuss our electricity we were led to believe that the caller was this brokerage company we had agreed to talk to. The person I spoke to from the brokerage assured me that the contract with BES was the best contract for our business, a statement which has proved to be untrue.
This sounds so much like the start of our story with BES Utilities, although with us they just claimed to be the main company that did commercial energy metering for ALL businesses in the area. As someone new to all that we just went along with it.
In this case, the salesman has picked up on or found out they would have been expecting a call and has played on that information to get these people to sign up for a fixed 2/3 year contract during which time BES could (and probably would) extract large sums of money from your bank account on a regular basis.
As per the above phone call on the 10th November 2014 a contract with BES was agreed. It was only when we received an email from the owners broker on the 13th November that we realised what had occurred. Having spoken to them we were told we could get a much better package for us with E.On.
Thats funny, as when the broker tricked us into a contract he said that the best deal was with BES also – and I assume the same happened here despite eOn actually being cheaper for us and these guys. Independent Broker? or maybe employee of BES Utilities… I wonder?
We heard nothing more from BES until a welcome letter/email was sent on the 25th November.
No contact while they get your supply moved over as quickly as possible and get you tied into a contract, as then im sure they would claim it was too late to cancel…
A complaint has been made with your customer service department as apart from the responses to our complaints we have had no information at all from BES. I had to request the terms and conditions, and contrary to the welcome letter stating someone would call for our meter reading on the 1st December, no one did. Neither did anyone call on the 28th November as I have been told by the customer service department, there was someone on site all day and there were no telephone messages left.
Woh, Thats really unlike BES to trick you into being their customer, then provide crap customer support afterwards…. oh wait… no… thats exactly what they’re like.
The direct debit has been cancelled as neither a bill nor remittance has been sent to us since the day the supply was taken, neither have we received confirmation of the direct debit, as we were informed we would.
Glad they hadn’t paid BES any money though – maybe this was all a misunderstanding after all?
Having now been told the name of the brokerage company who sent the contract in, Utility Services, I can find no information or proof that they exist. The recordings that I have been sent are edited and do not include all the information I was told before accepting the contract. It has been miss sold to us, and I expect this contract to be cancelled as soon as possible.
Ah there is it. Editing phone recordings? Using fake/phony brokers that are actually your salespeople? Thats “The BES Utilities Way” people.
Please spread the word, tell your friends especially if they are business owners and make sure they shop around manually first and read reviews and info online before tying yourself to a fixed commercial energy contract that could end up being a complete nightmare.
Please comment or share your stories via the contact page.
Had a funny email from some n00b scam merchant;
From: FedEx Ground <alvin.bowers@em021.cside.jp>
Date: 27 February 2015 at 15:46
Subject: Unable to deliver your item, #000552451
To: my@email.addressDear Customer,
Your parcel has arrived at February 26. Courier was unable to deliver the parcel to you.
Delivery Label is attached to this email.
Yours sincerely,
Alvin Bowers,
Station Manager.(C) 2014 FedEx. All rights reserved.
To say these people are trying to blag me, they aren’t exactly doing a very good job of it.
These kind of emails aren’t the fun ones that you can reply to and “bait” for a few weeks, these are the kind that just want you to open the zip file, and get infected with a virus so they can turn your PC into a zombie or something.
Be careful peeps - never open zip file attachments from anyone – even trusted sources!
If you need to send a legitimate file and it is an executable file or an archive, send it via something like Dropbox as they only allow you to upload and share safe stuff, meaning the person receiving can be confident enough to download and open it.
This is an old take on a common scam whereby a scammer emails a random person claiming to be in a position of authority – normally within a bank or financial institute – and they usually claim to have access to a large amount of money that they either need to get rid of, or that you are apparently the winner of.
I received an email today actually from;
From: Your payment <thomasgorman@consultant.com>
Date: 23 February 2015 at 13:40
Subject: Your Payment
To: Coleweb31 <coleweb31@yahoo.com>
So as per the normal scams of this nature, its made to look like I’ve possibly received it by accident – which I believe is to make me think I’m reading something I shouldn’t – natural intuition.
Its also cleverly worded, so that the first thing I see is about money – meaning I’m intrigued straight away. The next thing is a “normal” looking name and an email address that actually isn’t too bad (normally they are awful) and surprisingly the “Reply to” address is also the @consultant.com email – usually you find that when you hit reply it wants to send the email to something totally different.
Anyway, this scam is branded up with UN (United Nations) logos and claims to be from their “Monetary Unit” and is an apology that my payment is delayed and that they really want to get the money to me.
According to this attachment, I have to contact “Mr Brown Mathics” with all the details about myself, bank details etc and they they can wire me the monies – or something.
I shouldn’t have to really explain why this is a scam, its obviously a scam. The email address isnt a UN one. There is no content in the email apart from the attachment. The attachment is TERRIBLE quality.
Oh, and STUFF LIKE THIS DOESNT HAPPEN.
HTH. 
Its quite refreshing for me to write about someone other than BES Utilities or BES Telecom – today’s subject is a chap called Simon Macbeth and I felt compelled to write this blog post after seeing a link circulating on Facebook at the weekend.
Simon Macbeth lives in the Leeds area, rents a few rooms in his house and runs a few other little businesses – mainly “web design” companies (although I use that term lightly as a proper web design company designs websites!) – and does it all quite badly so it seems!
There are a few sides to this particular scammer so I’ve sectioned it off for easy digesting.
It seems that through some scam many years ago (as per some quote from his autobiography – autobiography? Is he for real?!) Simon Macbeth bought a house, and set about renting rooms out to people shortly afterwards, making more than a few of his house-mates feel a tad uneasy along the way;
I lived in his house for about 3 weeks, and during this time I was subject to threats of violence as well as some pretty f**ked up things. Within a week, I had received a text from him telling me that he had been in my room. I was a little bit frustrated about it so text him asking him to tell me next time he plans on going in there, to which he replied ‘this is my house and I will do what I want.’
I’ve lived with other people beside family before, and we never went into each others rooms unless we asked someone to – whether its your house or not, you have to respect peoples privacy. I dislike this assclown already!
I lived with this disgusting person for 3 months and it was awful. We told him to his face that we wanted to leave and end the contract but when it came to returning the deposit he said we had not issued the notice in writing. There was a strong smell of marijuana from his room the whole time and he was generally unkind, unfair and made a point of making you feel unwelcome.
What’s the point in renting rooms out to people, if you are then going to do your very best to drive them away? What kind of lying toe-rag does that? Oh wait….
He also pretended he was studying to be a youth worker, which I now see was a complete sham, to make you believe he had morals which clearly didn’t exist.
Oh that’s right, Simon Macbeth!
There are many many more stories on there about him making people feel uncomfortable, and worse. There are too many to quote, so check them out here: www.simonmacbeth.co
The part of this story that really tipped me over the edge, was when I saw that he apparently owned a number of web design companies, one main generic one and then a few little “industry specific” companies that sold one type of website to one industry.
It is all bollocks really as its just one “company” (i.e. him and the WordPress theme repository) and a load of websites that are optimised for specific web design related terms – making him appear to the outside world like he knows what he’s talking about.
We have to deal with the victims of these amateurs day in, day out. They leave a trail of unhappy customers behind them, many of whom still actually need a website. They eventually find a company like us and we have to re-educate them about the web industry and restore the faith he manages to single-handedly tear from each and every one of them.
Here’s one Simon Macbeth pro web designer (bwhaha) horror story;
After an exchange of numerous emails between myself and Mr Simon I paid him for what I understood to be my own website.
No terms and conditions were discussed. I searched for a domain name and asked him to register this domain name as part of my website. He said no problem and did so. He prepared my website and in the meantime I started with SEO and traffic generation to the website.
Oh wait a second… maybe we’ve got this guy all wrong after-all?
He was helping this guy set up his affiliate pay-day loan website, so that this guy could make a living for himself… That sounds alright, doesn’t it? Well after a while this chap hadn’t heard from Simon Macbeth, and after multiple unanswered calls and ignored emails, he started looked into the source code of his website…
I nearly fell of my chair when I saw they themselves were Affiliates and all the visitors I am sending to my website is cranking numbers on their affiliate link!
Ooo, that’s a bit naughty, Simon.
Then next thing they highjacked my domain name, remember they were the registrar and they changed the name servers and redirect their own website to that domain name. Now they have stolen my domain and my traffic as well!
Since then all I had from them is verbal abuse and some serious threats against me in person!
Ok. So let me get this straight. He took on a client who paid him to make them a website. He then allowed this client to get traffic to this website via SEO and PPC which would have all cost this client a fair whack (£1795.34 to be precise) He then changed their affiliate ID’s and started profiting from the website traffic himself?
Wow. That’s a double douche move.
Another innocent victim of Simon wrote;
I was looking for a website building company, to start a small online shop, I googled and unfortunately, Simon phony, fakey websites appear all over the place!! I spent hours looking at different companies. and much to my regret I plumped for 1 to 1 website design.
You can sense the anger she feels for him already!
She goes on to say they discussed her idea, and he seemed keen to do the job for her (too keen though, as she also believes Simon steals business ideas from people who contact him!!)
He asked for payment upfront of £1050… I was taken aback by this, told him I wasn’t comfortable paying upfront for something , I told him I assumed he would whip a design or 2, send them to me, and then we would agree on website, and I would pay maybe a deposit and the rest on completion.
This is technically standard practice for most premium web design companies, but ones that are worth bothering with will invite you to their office, let you meet their team members and chat to you over a coffee.
She reluctantly sent him the money, and he set about making her the website she dreamed of! Or so she thought…
I specifically asked for 2 design features… I said I wanted a brick work design and also if he could find it, a dog bone font… I later realise he wasn’t capable of producing either of these things, as he is not a designer, but a conman who has downloaded a free template from somewhere and he does not have the skill, ability or correct software to deviate from this.
Ah. He’s one of those “web designers” is he (a really crap one that can only install pre-made templates)
A few days later he sent me a link to the website build… I was horrified… a child could have done it on an iPad in about an hour…. It looked like it was built by a child …for a child!!
Oh. So he’s not even one of those “web designers” – I don’t even know what he is then?
It was awful…I emailed him to ring me…he did and I told him what I thought… he then became rude and obnoxious and tried to twist everything, telling me the brick design I asked for looked naff, that he had met my requirements, and I had mentioned the word Quirky in my form, and he told me quirky meant unexpected, and that his design was unexpected!!
He then emailed me and asked for another £499 to change it!!
Bwhahaha that’s hilarious. “Oh but you said “Dog” in your brief and the website looks like “Dog Poo” so thats ok innit?” hahaha… golden. What a bulb!
It does actually get better though!
I began to realise that his website isn’t what it seems…the team photo on 1 to 1 has been stolen from the Tipperary energy agency (I phoned them and they told me it is members of their engineering staff, not Simon’s web design team) his reviews are fakes written by him, he has fake websites, his photos are stolen from various genuine websites ( I have kindly informed them all of this)
Simon has seriously taken things to a whole new level of urine extraction!
I hope anyone out there that has used him for web services, or is looking to use him or one of his “companies” manages to get/stay away from him and get back any money that he succeeded in stealing from you.
We’re not all cowboys, but there are many like Simon Macbeth. Be careful.
It also seems that Simon is trying to use really bizarre SEO tactics in some feeble attempt at silencing the vast amount of bad press about him on the web – he places a landing page about himself on every website he cons someone to buy off him, and has probably put up loads of his own affiliate websites to try and flood the SERP’s for anyone searching for him, but you’ll never be able to get the kind of traction a site like the Simon Macbeth Exposed will, especially as the links continue to snowball around the social world!
In all seriousness, the “About Simon” pages he litters everywhere are a little creepy, they read a bit like he has some mental disorder and need to read positive things about himself on a daily basis to keep the voices in his head happy. If I had bought a website and saw that linked in the footer of my website, I’d ask him to remove it straight away and refrain from ever using my website as an outlet for his self-help ever again.
Its not often you find so much negative information about one person online – you couldn’t even find this many stories about known and documented conmen and scumbags – and stories of Simon Macbeth are only really starting to surface now.
Do your bit, visit Simon Macbeth Exposed and share some of the content on there. If everyone that reads the stories on there re-publishes at least one of them then we can push his websites out the Google Rankings and dominate with facts about this serial-douchebag.
Together, nothing is impossible.
