Enercare Home Services

TLDR: Good luck trying to cancel. Enercare made it as difficult as possible.

My mother passed away in early February 2016. She had a heating and cooling plan with Enercare. I wanted to stop the contract from automatically renewing (since Enercare employs negative-option billing), and also wanted to make February the last billing period (plan expired in April).

Simple, right? I went through this process with Rogers Cable, and it was (surprisingly) easy. No Death Certificate required, charges pro-rated to half a month's billing, a follow up letter confirming all this received in the mail 3 days later.

The first agent I spoke to at Enercare demanded a Death Certificate, thankfully, an electronic copy would satisfy them. I requested the service not re-new: done, I was told. Then I asked to pro-rate the remaining part of the contract. Refused. What? So death does not release a client from your contract? No. Seriously? Yes, I can send you our Terms & Conditions.

I get the Terms & Conditions via email, but there's nothing relevant in there.

Now I'm starting to think I better get a written confirmation about the cancellation of the contract, or I'm going to find oh whoops! It's renewed for another year! So I call again, and the 2nd agent says, cancellation? What cancellation? I don't see no cancellation. She says she has to get me in touch with their Retention Department (oh joy), and that one of their reps will call me within 24 hrs. What, you can't transfer me? No, I'm told, our phone systems are different.

Twenty-four hours elapse, no call. I call back again. Third agent says, I can transfer you to the retention department, hold on. Uhuh.

Fourth agent is the dreaded retention specialist. Thankfully she did not bother to get me to re-new the contract, but confirmed that the account will not auto-renew. I ask for written confirmation of this. Refused. Why? It's not our policy. Assures me not to worry, it won't renew. I don't accept these assurances, insist on a note. Refused. I say I'm going to contact the Ministry to clarify this.

Turns out there's nothing in the Consumer Protection Act that says a company must provide written confirmation of the cancellation of a service contract. Well, there should be (I think I'll write the Minister and my MPP). Most companies will do this anyway, or upon request, because why? Because it's the right thing to do. But not Enercare. Fine, you win Enerdontcare.

Then I get a call today from Enercare. The 5th agent, who seems senior or in another department, confirms that the contract will not auto-renew, agrees to pro-rate the end of the contract if I didn't want to run it out to the end, and also agrees to send a mailed statement to this effect. I'm stunned. So why the runaround? Why did your company put up so many obstacles? Why was I given false or conflicting information? She apologized and agreed that the entire process wasn't acceptable, and that she's going to "escalate this" and use it as a "teaching moment" for their call center staff generally and the agents I dealt with specifically.

This satisfactory resolution raises the score from 0 to 1.

UPDATE: Will it surprise the reader to know that this saga has two more chapters? After writing this review, was contacted by an Enercare agent's whose job it is to monitor social media for posts like this, and try to make amends before it causes too much damage. Puts me in contact with the "Office of the President" whose agent, finally, resolved the issue. That's seven agents total, if you're keeping score at home, for this issue to be resolved.