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CitizensTranslatingManchester CitizensTranslatingManchester Home How we can help DebtTranslatingEnergyTranslatingFace toSquatterFacebook Messenger Hate Crime HousingTranslatingMoneySmart Training Stay Safe Online Training Pension Wise Self Help SkypeTranslatingTelephone Universal Credit Support Web Chat Assisted Digital Visa Service Other Help Volunteering Volunteer Roles Benefits of volunteering Apply to Volunteer DigitalTranslatingEvents Volunteer Telephone Triage Assessor Volunteer Receptionist Campaigning Work with Us News What we doWell-nighUs Disclaimer and Copyright Privacy Policy Contact Us Our Trustees Log in Make a Referral WAD Survey Home/ How we can help/Debt AdviceEnergy AdviceFace to FaceFacebook MessengerHate CrimeHousing AdviceMoneySmart TrainingStay Safe Online TrainingPension WiseSelf HelpSkype AdviceTelephoneUniversal Credit SupportWeb ChatAssisted Digital Visa ServiceOther Help Volunteering/Volunteer RolesBenefits of volunteeringApply to VolunteerDigital AdviceEvents VolunteerTelephone Triage AssessorVolunteer Receptionist Campaigning/ Work with Us/ News/ What we do/About UsDisclaimer and CopyrightPrivacy PolicyContact UsOur Trustees Log in/Make a ReferralWAD Survey CitizensTranslatingManchester for self-ruling Debt Benefits Housing help CitizensTranslatingManchester for self-ruling help with Debt Benefits Housing Employment Immigration Consumer Family translating via telephone squatter to squatter webchat email and skype  Home/ How we can help/Debt AdviceEnergy AdviceFace to FaceFacebook MessengerHate CrimeHousing AdviceMoneySmart TrainingStay Safe Online TrainingPension WiseSelf HelpSkype AdviceTelephoneUniversal Credit SupportWeb ChatAssisted Digital Visa ServiceOther Help Volunteering/Volunteer RolesBenefits of volunteeringApply to VolunteerDigital AdviceEvents VolunteerTelephone Triage AssessorVolunteer Receptionist Campaigning/ Work with Us/ News/ What we do/About UsDisclaimer and CopyrightPrivacy PolicyContact UsOur Trustees Log in/Make a ReferralWAD Survey Volunteer for CitizensTranslatingManchester What's your weightier advice? Welcome to CitizensTranslatingManchesterCitizensTranslatingManchester offers free, confidential, impartial and self-sustaining translating and information on a wide range of subjects. Get in touch through our Adviceline, Town Hall service, wangle points wideness the municipality or via webchat and email services. GetTranslatingWe are a charity. Help us to alimony waffly lives with advice.Without the generous support of people up and lanugo the country, we couldn't protract the work we do. Donate CitizensTranslatingManchester Newsletter Sign up with your email write to receive news and updates. EmailWriteSign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you! Latest News Featured Sep 2, 2018 Learn how stuff online can save you hundreds of pounds a year Sep 2, 2018 Learn how stuff online can save you time and money. Our 3 hour session will requite you the tools you need to be increasingly confident and increasingly savvy using the internet. ReadIncreasingly→ Sep 2, 2018 Aug 30, 2018 When brokers go rogue Aug 30, 2018 We welcome the news that energy regulator Ofgem wants stronger powers to protect the country’s smallest businesses from overzealous energy brokers. It’s just a shame it’s taken so long for this problem to be tackled.Over two thirds of small businesses buy electricity and gas from a broker, who acts as an intermediary between suppliers and customers. Good brokers should, in theory, engage with the small merchantry by informing them of the weightier deals and tariffs on the market — but this doesn’t unchangingly happen.In its recent response to the government’s Consumer Green Paper, Ofgem said:“Our vestige suggests that some businesses that engage with intermediaries may be misled or left unsatisfied with their treatment. Strengthening our powers to enforce consumer protection law that applies to the non-domestic market, particularly for smaller businesses, would modernize our worthiness to tackle misconduct by intermediaries. We would like to explore this with government.”In search of honest brokersWhen energy suppliers sell to households, Ofgem makes sure they meet strict standards. They must be transparent well-nigh who they work for and requite well-judged price comparisons. Suppliers have received big fines for breaking these rules.It’s well-spoken that small businesses need similar protections. We requite translating to small businesses through our consumer service helpline and Extra Help Unit. Our tutors have helped with cases where brokers have used sharp practice, plane outright fraud, to win contracts. The financial impact on businesses who’ve been mis-sold can be severe — at its worst, it can tip a profitable merchantry into the red.Last year, we published a list of the most worldwide problems with brokers that small businesses contacted us about.The list includes warlike sales, lack of transparency, misrepresentation and mis-selling.Increasinglyspecific examples include brokers ultimatum to be from an official body, ultimatum a new product is necessary and hiding commercial relationships with specific energy suppliers. There’s no obligation to record the conversation between a usurer and a merchantry that leads to a sale, which ways complaints are very difficult to prove. Instead, these businesses rely on the good will of their energy supplier to end their contract.This lack of protection has dire consequences not just for individual businesses but for the market as a whole.There’s vestige of an engagement gap in the sector and we think some of this is lanugo to the behaviour of brokers. The good ones are good, but if you’ve had a bad wits in the past, you might not be willing to use a usurer again. This is bad for the market and for consumers considering there won’t be the same pressure to alimony prices down.What can be done?To gainsay this, there needs to be regulation of energy brokers. We’ve been calling for this since 2004, but it’s still the specimen that merchantry owners can’t rely on the same vital protections in their merchantry premises as they can in their homes.At Citizens Advice, we believe the right response is a mandatory lawmaking of practice. This lawmaking should reflect the 6 voluntary principles we ripened with Ofgem to encourage good practice among brokers. These unmistakably outline to the energy industry well-spoken expectations of how we expected energy brokers to behave. ReadIncreasingly→ Aug 30, 2018 Campaigning As well as providing advice, every CitizensTranslatingBureau has a twin aim of collecting vestige from clients’ experiences – and our experiences of recommending them – and using this to wayfarers for positive changes that can goody everybody, and not just people who come in to the bureaux. Latest Tweets CitizensTranslatingMCR Our translating can make a huge impact on people's lives. If you need support, we're #heretohelp https://t.co/3mrE2HMnVs well-nigh 14 minutes ago CitizensTranslatingMCR RT @ForumCentre: Get #advice from the @ManchesterCAB waif in service on Monday or Wednesday's 10-1pm in #ForumLibrary #Wythenshawe https://t.co/uZ8Tms30kW well-nigh 20 minutes ago CitizensTranslatingMCR Over 50 with a personal or workplace pension? Call 0800 138 3944 to typesetting a #PensionWise visit to find out how to take your money. well-nigh an hour ago Volunteer with us Volunteering can be hugely rewarding! If you’d like to uplift your CV and enhance your skills for life and work or simply help people from your community, then you should consider volunteering for us. We’re one of a network of over 400 bureaux wideness England and Wales. You may plane have visited us for translating – over 40% of the population has! Find out increasingly Feedback - Tell us how we helped youYour feedback is really important, it is good to hear what we are doing well and where we can modernize our services.  Feedback Supported byThe Foresters Friendly SocietyCo-operative Bank            Railway Benevolent FundTDS Charitable Foundation Good Things FoundationManchesterMunicipalityCouncilBritish Gas Energy TrustPharmacist SupportLegal Aid AgencyCitizens AdviceIrwin MitchellOddfellowsRiverside Copyright © 2015 CitizensTranslatingManchester. All rights reserved.  RegisteredSoft-heartednessNumber  1010167. Company limited by guarantee. Registered number 2697257. Authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority FRN:617659