Why do I have to spend so much energy trying to get a simple refund from Toto?

G.W. writes: I receive my gas and electricity from Toto Energy. I have tried to contact it by phone and in writing – with no success. Toto takes £131 from my bank account each month. This is the winter rate, set in the winter of 2017 and early 2018. It should have switched to the summer rate of £43 in May last year, but it didn’t.

AS a result of Toto collecting £131 a month, you notched up a growing credit balance with the company. Quite reasonably, you wanted a refund and you asked Toto to collect just £43 a month.

You have given me copies of letters you sent Toto and even a Royal Mail certificate of posting. But Toto failed to reply and carried on helping itself to £131 a month. You could have cancelled the direct debit of course, but I expect that if you had done so, Toto would equally have threatened to cut off your gas and electricity supply.

Dealing with Toto on your behalf has not been easy nor quick. Well before Christmas, your account was £422 in credit. Toto said it would refund £180, cut its direct debit to £100 a month, and credit £30 to your account as a gesture of goodwill.

It was slow to pay the £180. When it did it told you that it wanted an extra £200 to tide you over the winter. This led you to demand that Toto refund the whole of your credit balance, with no compromises.

Toto then offered to refund a further £189, as long as it could hang on to £100. A month later it had still not refunded the £189, but had managed to rake in another £100 from your bank account in December. Toto described this situation as ‘ideal’, because it expected you to consume extra energy. It gave no explanation as to why it offered to repay £189 but failed to do so.

Toto also failed to explain why it carried on collecting £131 a month throughout last summer. Bizarrely, Toto even told me: ‘There is no winter rate.’

This is nothing more than playing with words. In December 2017, Toto wrote saying your ‘new monthly amount for winter’ was £131 and your ‘new monthly amount for summer’ would be £43. Toto clearly felt it needed your money more than you did. It collected too much, then tried to hold on to it.

Toto does itself no favours. A few weeks ago my colleague Toby Walne reported on his visits to several small energy suppliers. He dropped in at Toto’s headquarters in Brighton and met operations chief Tom Nicholas, one of the people you wrote to without answer. Nicholas was anxious to stress Toto’s financial stability despite notching up losses of more than £1 million.

Perhaps whatever stability there is comes at a cost in terms of customer service. Citizens Advice puts Toto at the very bottom of a recent league table of energy companies, citing issues with billing and difficulty in contacting it. Not surprisingly, you have told me that you will now be switching suppliers.