You simply cannot believe a thing you are told in the Press.

A tweeted article on The People's Energy Co caught my attention. The company had raised £500k from 2000 pledgers on Crowdfunder, a rewards based platform, in July 2017. The article stated that the company was to repay crowdfunders earlier than expected. How fantastic I thought.

The tweet was from a well recognised and very well regarded journalist. It linked me in as if to say here is an example of a CF success.

Here is the article - https://www.insider.co.uk/news/peoples-energy-begin-repay-crowdfunders-13700660

The reason I double checked the information is that Insider rarely get things right  - they just print press releases. No change in this case.

PEC gave away as rewards for pledges a varying amount of free energy. This giveaway was to be triggered by the company reaching 20k customers. In the pitch, completed in July 2017, they state this will be in 12 to 18 months time. So we are now on month 17 - so certainly not early. However this dividend, as the article calls it, is only going to 500 of the 2000 pledgers - so the all the others will be getting theirs late. If they get theirs.

And it is not a dividend as the article erroneously states. It is a part of the Crowdfunder contract. It is a reward for giving the company money in 2017. Nothing to do with equity or dividends. It is due. Already purchased. Non delivery of which would be a breach of their contract with pledgers. If you like, it's like pre purchasing a book before it has been written and then hearing that the company has written the book but only published 25% of number that they owe to people. Hardly encouraging news.  

So this Insider article is totally misleading. The company, which claims it is standing up for consumers and is better than all the other major suppliers because it can be trusted, stated the following in the article -

''Originally, we hoped to start our first pay-out by March 2019 but business has been so strong that we are able to honour the pledge earlier than that, which is fantastic.

“People are fed up with being taken for a ride by large corporates, and they have lost trust in their energy suppliers.  We have set out to restore trust, by ensuring that in everything we do, we act fairly and responsibly, doing the right thing for the people and the planet.”

Well, March is not within the 12-18 month stated by the company on Crowdfunder; it is 20 months out - close but not in. So how can you trust a company that doesnt tell the truth? Im fed up with poor journalism and the incredible volume of inaccurate information that the internet allows to land on our desks.