Nationwide Energy Services are a call centre based in Swansea.
"Nationwide Energy Services believes that everyone should claim the government grants available for loft insulation and cavity wall insulation" source NES website
Nationwide Energy Services managed to convince the BBC Wales business correspondent that they are an important new employer. They're taking on 350 call centre staff in Swansea to alert home owners that they may be entitled to free govt grants for home insulation.
The money does exist - it comes from the CERT scheme (Carbon Emission Reduction Targets).
You may be reading this because you are one of the thousands of people Nationwide Energy Services bother every week with their cold telephone calls. Oh the irony - they promise to help keep us warm, but they do it by cold calling!
Nationwide Energy Services phoned my mother yesterday. The salesman told her the 'government usually gives us bu**ger all'. Language like that still surprises my mother, especially when it comes from someone who's phoned her uninvited. She firmly told him she already has loft insulation and doesn't want cavity wall insulation, but somehow he managed to persuade her to reveal her address so a surveyor could call round today.
As soon as she got off the phone she realised she may be the victim of a scam. She knows I have already checked if she is eligible for energy saving grants (she isn't) so this free visit could only end up costing. So she tried to phone Nationwide Energy Services on 0800 408 9000 but after repeated attempts all she got was either music or an announcement saying there is a fault.
Then she spoke to me. I googled the company. Yes they are bonafide agents, who cold call mainly old people setting up appointments for insulation installers. The NES blog says they make 10,000 visits each week resulting in 7,000 installations.
So if Nationwide Energy Services are a bona-fide company ensuring homeowners get their share of govt cash why don't they ever answer their phones?
A web search shows that almost no-one can get through on this number, or any other number NES has phoned them from. This is no doubt because after investing all that time persuading people they need a visit they certainly don't want them to phone back and cancel. Nor would they want to actually have to pay operators to lose them business.
I decided I'd better go round to my mother's in time for the surveyor's visit - planned for between 12 and 3. I didn't make it. She phoned at 11am to say the surveyor had just been.
Fortunately she showed the shabbily turned out man the same respect Nationwide Energy Services showed her - she sent him away with a lecture about how she won't deal with companies that use inappropriate language and don't answer their phones.
The web is awash with tales of bodged jobs, and missed installations, but I'm sure they must have some satisfied customers among those 7,000 weekly installations.
Some people have received free insulation and been very happy. So why operate the business like its a scam, giving a useful service the big hard sell and frightening pensioners in their homes?
Rather telling is the forum posting from a former tele-sales worker at NES. The ex-worker managed to fix up 4 successful visits a day - not enough for Nationwide Energy Services who require many more visits to earn their commission from the CERT fund. After being urged to push harder, this worker decided NES wasn't an employer they wanted to work for - even in recession hit Swansea.
The money for the CERT scheme comes from the energy companies, who of course collect it from us via our energy bills. It's a shame this government scheme wastes so much of our cash paying commission to middlemen who've spotted a business opportunity.
Apparently Nationwide Energy Services are planning to branch out into comparison selling insurance. How about PPI claims handling? Or accident victim compensation? These sound like suitable services for a company which never answers its phones and ignores the rules of the Telephone Preference Service when it comes to cold calling.
Update, June 2013. BBC Three are currently screening 'The Call Centre' an observational documentary soap in the style of comedy series The Office, showing what high jinks the happy Welsh workers at the company behind Nationwide Energy Services are. Nev, their cheery boss is portrayed as a loveable version of David Brent. The BBC rather gloss over the annoyance caused to millions of elderly people trapped at home all day, by all this cold calling activity, but hey why let the facts spoil the fun.
18th June 2013 - Embarassment for the BBC today as the Information Commissioner has imposed fines totalling £225,000 on 2 of the companies featured in BBC Three's the Call Centre (one of which is Nationwide Energy Services, the other a ppi claim company - the first to be fined). The fines are for failing to make adequate checks the people they cold call are in fact registered with the Telephone Preference Service (and have therefore legally chosen not to receive unsolicited marketing calls). The Information Commissioner received more than 2,700 complaints about these companies between May and December 2012. I'm sure the BBC will be re-recording some of the voice over in future episodes to restore some editorial balance to the series. It may be hysterically funny to work there, but their antics inflict misery on millions of old people, stuck at home all day, who now are too scared to answer their own phones because they know it will be some numpty asking if they've been mis-sold payment protection insurance.
18th June 2013 - Embarassment for the BBC today as the Information Commissioner has imposed fines totalling £225,000 on 2 of the companies featured in BBC Three's the Call Centre (one of which is Nationwide Energy Services, the other a ppi claim company - the first to be fined). The fines are for failing to make adequate checks the people they cold call are in fact registered with the Telephone Preference Service (and have therefore legally chosen not to receive unsolicited marketing calls). The Information Commissioner received more than 2,700 complaints about these companies between May and December 2012. I'm sure the BBC will be re-recording some of the voice over in future episodes to restore some editorial balance to the series. It may be hysterically funny to work there, but their antics inflict misery on millions of old people, stuck at home all day, who now are too scared to answer their own phones because they know it will be some numpty asking if they've been mis-sold payment protection insurance.
