5th March 2019
This website describes my horrendous experience with Hero Renewables after I cancelled an order for an Air Source Heat Pump. I was owed a full refund of the deposit, which Hero Renewables tried to not pay.
The headline is that it was the worst customer experience I’ve ever had. Hero Renewables acted unlawfully, charged me for work not done, were dishonest, failed to respond to my communications, failed to give me information, were obstructive, rude and hostile towards me, and blamed me for issues which were clearly caused by their actions. Most seriously, when I tried to claim my money back using a credit card chargeback, they made a false statement to their bank to challenge it. I've also discovered that many online reviews for them are fake.
This page gives a short overview of the problems I had, while the details page provides the full story with full communications records.
UPDATE October 2019
Since starting to leave reviews about Hero Renewables a number of events have happened. Firstly, within half an hour of leaving a review on Facebook, they disabled their entire Facebook page. It resurfaced a couple of months later but with the review page disabled. It says a lot about a company when they silence customer reviews!
As a direct result of my reviews I've been contacted several times by both directors Martin Murphy and Jill Oldham, claiming to want to discuss and understand the issues I've had. It's interesting that one of the main problems I had with Hero Renewables was lack of communication. I counted that out of 19 communications I made to them requiring a response, they responded to only 5 of them. There's also the astounding statistic that there was a 5 month period during which they didn't respond to me or initiate any communication, despite me repeatedly chasing them for my refund, me subsequently issuing a credit card chargeback, and them challenging it.
Yet despite this lack of communication, I was emailed within a couple of days of me leaving a review on Google, and have been called by Jill Oldham twice. It's interesting that when I have an issue with them they go silent, but when I start leaving reviews they're suddenly very eager to communicate with me!
To be fair, Jill did admit that they handled the situation very badly and did apologise for some of what they did, but failed to provide any sort of explanation which leads me to my original conclusion that their actions were deliberate. I do not believe her claim that she was calling me to understand my concerns: she had had several months since the issue ended before I left my reviews but she never contacted me until after I left reviews. She also offered me a (pitifully small) sum of money in the form of vouchers in return for removing my reviews, so I think it's clear she had no interest in understanding my concerns, but only in protecting the image of her company.
It's worth noting that during these calls, Jill admitted that many of the online reviews were left by friends, family and employees, but claimed that this was normal and acceptable. See the fake reviews page for more details.
For further evidence that using Hero Renewables is a bad idea, see this press release from MCS dated 17th October 2019 which says that several ground source heat pumps rebranded by Hero Renewables to the "Hero Classic" and "Hero Elite" brandnames are not MCS certified and were never in fact eligable for the RHI. In summary it appears that Hero Renewables have been selling heat pumps, claiming that they will receive RHI, when in fact they were never on the Ofgem Product Eligibility List, which is a requirement for receiving the RHI.
The reason I’m writing this is to warn other people about the actions of this company so you can decide if you really want to trust them with your money. If you’re considering using Hero Renewables and want any more information, feel free to contact me at hero_renewables@martianmonkey.co.uk. Likewise if you’ve had a similar experience with them it would be interesting to hear your story, so please contact me.
If you’re on the verge of placing an order with them but are thinking “it can’t be that bad, this guy is probably just making a big issue out of an insignificant problem” then please take the time to read at least the rest of this page. There was not just one small problem, there were multiple issues at absolutely every step of the way. I've written a full list of all the separate issues below.
I'm not the only one either, their Facebook page is full of negative reviews, many of which are for the same sort of problems. You might have seen their YouGen profile which is full of positive reviews, but consider this before you believe them: 6 out of the 8 positive reviews on Facebook at the time of writing are fake as they’re written by either employees of Hero Renewables or people who are friends with Martin Murphy, one of the company directors. I’ve added a section on this here. If you’re still not convinced about their dishonestly then you can get third party confirmation by contacting HIES. Hero Renewables were expelled from the HIES consumer protection scheme for breaching their code of practice. I was told this directly while speaking to HIES, who stated it is not a decision that's taken lightly, and was caused by many other complaints, not just mine.
My problem with them was not just one small issue: they acted unlawfully, dishonestly, obstructively or with absolutely no care or concern for me as a customer at just about every stage of the process and on multiple occasions. The following is a brief list of all of the individual events that contributed to the issue:
I've highlighted all of their instances of poor conduct below, mainly so you can see just how often they failed to communicate or were obstructive.
In January 2018 I placed an order with Hero Renewables for an ASHP, paying a 5% deposit of £466.99. Their terms and conditions stated that this deposit was fully refundable if cancelled within a 14 day cooling off period, but that they may charge for any costs incurred after 14 days.
As part of their MCS accreditation, Hero Renewables had to register the deposit with a consumer protection scheme, in this case it was The Home Insulation & Energy Systems Contractors Scheme (HIES). They paid HIES £102 to guarantee the deposit, however HIES rules say that this cost cannot be directly passed on to customers (although I didn’t know this until 6 months later).
In February, 28 days after I placed the order, but before Hero Renewables had done any work, I decided to use a different company and cancelled my order with Hero Renewables by phone. I spoke to Martin Murphy who is one of the company directors, who said that I was their first ever cancellation, and stated that they would refund my deposit, but deduct the costs of the HIES deposit protection money. Although I didn’t realise at the time, this is an instance where they were dishonest as they’re not allowed to directly charge for the HIES deposit. Subsequently they have never admitted at any point that they were wrong to deduct this cost from my refund. In fact even after they finally agreed to pay me, they still claimed this charge was valid.
The law gives companies 14 days to provide a refund after a customer cancels, yet within the next 2 and a half months they failed to refund me, so this is the first example where they clearly acted unlawfully. During this period I tried contacting them multiple times. The first time was after 4 weeks when I emailed Martin, and he responded saying that their managing director, who is Jill Oldham, was dealing with it. This was the only time they responded to my communications during this 10 week period, which is a primary example of their extremely poor communication.
After 5 weeks I emailed Martin again, but I got no response. After 7 weeks I phoned them and was told I would receive a call back later that day, but they did not phone me back. The following day I called back and was told the same, but I didn’t receive a call back.
After 8 weeks I called and this time got through to Jill Oldham who said I would receive the refund within 2 weeks. I complained at the amount of time it was taking. She blamed it on the HIES deposit, which even if they were allowed to deduct should not be the cause of a 2 month delay. It also became clear that she wasn’t aware of their own cancellation policy, instead claiming that the cooling off period was 30 days. When I said that I had in fact cancelled within 30 days she claimed they didn’t have a record of my cancellation date. She said she would investigate and get back to me later that week. However I did not hear back from her.
After 9 weeks I had still not received the refund so I sent an email giving them until the end of the week to pay me. I didn’t receive a response and I didn’t receive a refund, so 10 weeks after cancelling I submitted a chargeback request through my credit card provider.
It’s worth noting that because chargebacks works quite slowly, Hero Renewables didn’t become aware of my chargeback until 20th June, another 2 months later. In that 2 month period they still made no attempt to contact me nor to refund me.
The chargeback process took a while, but on 30th July about 6 months after cancelling my order, I heard from my bank that Hero Renewables had successfully challenged it on the basis that "the charges they incurred were greater than the value of deposit". This was a surprise to me as they had not mentioned any charges other than the £102 HIES deposit protection.
I phoned Martin Murphy to query this and he said that in addition to the HIES deposit protection charge, there was now a 20% cancellation fee, a charge for a site survey, and a charge for technical drawings. However, no survey or drawings had been done, and their terms and conditions do not mention a 20% cancellation fee, so considering they are not allowed to charge the HIES fee, none of these charges were valid. I complained that I’d not been told about these charges and that they were not valid. He said that he would investigate and get back to me later that week. I did not hear back from him and I did not receive any explanation for the fictitious charges for more than 2 months.
Although I didn’t see the exact evidence that they used to challenge the chargeback until several months later, I will repeat their statement here now:
"The client was fully aware from numerous telephone conversations that costs had been incurred for his project which would require to be deducted. The costs outweighed the deposit but we chose not to send a bill to this client at this time. We registered the client deposit with warranty which also incurred our costs as well as the survey costs. The client is in receipt of the signed order/warranty documentation and has discussed the installation at length with our team prior to actually being asked to go to his property to carry out our full design survey".
There are several pieces of false information here. I was not “fully aware” of the costs that had been incurred; they had barely communicated with me before the chargeback, had not even given me an exact figure for the HIES cost, and certainly hadn’t mentioned the other costs at all. Although badly worded, they specifically mention the HIES cost ("deposit with warranty") but as they are not allowed to directly charge this, it's a false statement. That the “costs outweighed the deposit” was not true as none of the costs were valid. That they had been “asked to go to his property to carry out our full design survey” was also completely untrue, no such conversation ever took place.
Remember this is the formal statement that Hero Renewables made to their bank to challenge my chargeback. They eventually admitted that a survey was not done and that the costs were not valid. Therefore they had the correct information available, had they acted with care, but submitted this false statement anyway. As a result of this statement, the chargeback was unjustly decided in their favour.
A few days after speaking to Martin I also sent an email setting out my full complaint in writing. After some research I realised they hadn’t sent me their cancellation terms in compliance with the law as they hadn’t given me them on a durable medium. This is the second confirmed instance where they didn’t comply with the law. As had become common, I did not receive a response to this email.
Two weeks later when I’d still heard nothing from them I had a series of emails with Martin where he actively refused to investigate the false charges until they had received the money back from the chargeback. This is despite him saying he’d respond to me the previous week, despite my bank telling me that the chargeback had been resolved, and despite the resolution of the chargeback having no impact on their ability to investigate the charges. I told him what my bank had said: that the money had been sent back to their bank on 12th July, and I asked him to contact his bank to confirm that the money had been returned. I also explained that even if they hadn’t yet received the money back into their account, it doesn’t stop them investigating the charges. Yet Martin still refused to investigate them, and refused to contact his bank. This is a prime example of their dishonesty (saying he’d investigate then not doing so) and of their obstructiveness (not doing simple things which would help resolve the issue).
During the previous few days I’d also been in contact with HIES who were looking into the matter. A few days after the previous email exchange I heard from HIES that Hero Renewables had agreed to fully refund me.
I tried contacting Hero Renewables to get direct confirmation of this. I sent an email simply asking for confirmation to both Jill and Martin but they didn’t respond. I sent another email a couple of days later and they didn’t respond to that either. I then phoned Martin, but he outright refused to confirm to me what they’d already confirmed with HIES. This is another even more extreme example of their obstructiveness.
I then phoned Jill and she did finally confirm that they’d agreed to refund me, but she called it a “goodwill” payment and claimed they had no obligation to refund me. I would contend that as none of the charges were valid then they did have an obligation to refund me!
I was also in contact with my bank to find out where the money actually was, as they were telling me it had been returned to Hero Renewables, but Hero Renewables were telling me it wasn’t in their account. My bank said that in order for them to investigate they would need written confirmation from Hero Renewables’s bank stating that they didn’t have the money. I had already asked them to contact their bank, but as my bank was now specifically requesting this I contacted Jill to ask again. Jill did agree to do this within the next few days, but then became hostile towards me, raising her voice, complaining about the number of times I was contacting them (which wouldn’t have needed to be the case if they responded to me), and blaming the delays on me doing the chargeback. This is an example of their rude and hostile behaviour towards me and of them blaming me for the problem. In addition, Jill did not contact their bank and I did not get a response, further examples of their dishonesty and poor communication.
Over the next 2 weeks I again tried to contact them but got no response to an email. I tried phoning, but despite being told on 2 occasions that I’d get a call back from Jill that same day, she never returned my phone call – yet further examples of obstruction and poor communication.
Eventually in mid September I did hear from Martin that the chargeback had been decided in my favour, which was surprising as this was not what my bank had said. Clearly there had been some confusion between the banks (which may have been cleared up if Hero Renewables had contacted their bank as requested). However over the next 3 weeks I still didn’t receive the money and despite emailing Martin for an update, he didn’t reply.
Finally, at the beginning of October, Martin responded saying the bank had changed their decision and found the chargeback in their favour, as my bank had originally told me. Hero Renewables did then, after 8 months, finally pay me the full refund.
I had a phone call with Martin Murphy where he did eventually explain the reason for the survey charges being on the account. Apparently they were put on in error and he said he challenged the chargeback based only on what his computer screen said, and he did apologise for their mistake. However he made no apology for their atrocious communication, nor for the fact that they didn’t refund me within the first 2 and a half months - when I asked him about this he avoided the question. Also he claimed that the delays were my fault, but didn’t give any reasoning. It’s difficult to see how it could be my fault for them not sending me a refund, the ball was in their court at every step of the process.
I do not believe his excuse for the charges being on my account. While I cannot know for sure, it is my opinion that once they received my chargeback, Hero Renewables deliberately fabricated the charges for the survey so they could challenge the chargeback and avoid having to repay me the deposit. I believe this because of the number of co-incidences that needed to happen for this to be an honest mistake: it seems unlikely that given I was the first cancellation they’d ever had, and their first ever chargeback, that I also just happened to be the one affected by what is presumably an unusual error causing not only ficticious charges to appear by mistake, but also ficticious communications records. Even if this did happen, then surely the records would still have shown the multiple times I’d tried contacting them, so if Martin was just looking at his computer screen, he would have seen these and could have contacted me.
On top of this I’d spoken to both Martin and Jill about the cancellation so they were personally aware of it, Jill was the one who was handling the refund, and when I spoke to her before I did the chargeback she was clearly already aware of my cancellation without having to consult records. So given that my cancellation was the first and only one they'd had, and it was being dealt with by the directors, it had enough attention focussed on it that it seems exceptionally unlikely that any mistakes wouldn't quickly get noticed. Even if they did genuinely believe the charges were valid and that my chargeback was unwarranted, they made no attempt to communicate the charges to me, and made no effort whatsoever to contact me to ask me why I was making what they thought was an unwarranted chargeback.
It's also extremely suspicious that there was absolutely no mention of the survey charges until after I did the chargeback; had they been on my account at the time I cancelled, they would surely have mentioned it along with the HIES charge. It should therefore have been obvious to Martin, when looking at my account while challenging my chargeback, that the charges dated from after I cancelled. So Martin's explanation just doesn't make sense.
They clearly had no intention of paying me the refund, as is apparent from the fact they hadn’t done so by the time they received notification of the chargeback 4 and a half months after I cancelled. Combined with their complete lack of effort to communicate with me, the repeated dishonestly around the HIES charge and refusal to investigate the survey charges, it seems reasonable to reach the opinion that they deliberately fabricated the charges.
I understand that mistakes do happen. If Hero Renewables had made a genuine error in deducting the charges from the refund, and if they had been genuinely delayed in refunding me due to it being their first cancellation, then I would be fine with it if they had kept me informed, admitted their mistake, made an apology and demonstrated that they were working to put it right. These are all things that a respectable, honest company would do, and in that situation, even if there had been issues, I would not be writing this.
Ultimately, although Martin did make a weak apology and admission of doing some unspecified things wrong, they have been largely unapologetic. They have taken no responsibility for the delays, have made no admission of their atrocious communication, and made no admission that charging me for the HIES fee or 20% cancellation fee was wrong. They have instead claimed that it was my fault and, laughably, that they would have liked to resolve it amicably.
If you are looking to have a renewable technology installed avoid this corrupt and untrustworthy company. There are many reputable companies out there, do not trust Hero Renewables.
If you've reached this far you will realise that this was a very long and complex case, but the above explanation is just the short version! The details page has more information including my full communication record which provides evidence for all of Hero Renewable's actions.