Home Energy Scotland Reviews 

As a sales and marketing man for over 40 years I was very impressed with the friendly, helpful and efficient professional way the staff came across during the entire interview. Also their sound knowledge of their subject. No pushing of political agendas.

I telephoned and rapidly got through. I found them very knowledgeable and helpful. They gave impartial advice and were pragmatic about what was likely to work for my situation.

As a 70yr old, struggled financially to built my last home, was over the moon to got help from this mob to fit my solar panels on, a £2500 grant plus up to 6500 interest-free loan, yippee, took me some 5 months to sort all the portal thing and all they asked of me with no help what so ever, at last, i gave my all, then when I asked to speak to a manager because of the time and 10 different people I talked too on my travels with them, I got a email stating we cant help you with this as we only give grants for biomass boiler plus solar together???? was offered the 2 at £23000, crazy amount, 9some body making dosh) could not afford it,

so now I have to find 7k for solar panels, which I could have done 4 months ago, now held back for completion, the Scottish government is a joke. Like my state pension. worked all my life and saved to get this garbage. I wish you all well,

HES. What a delight to have phone call answered more or less immediately agents were polite, articulate and extremely helpful and well informed. A very pleasant experience and felt more comfortable about the coming winter armed
With excellent help and sugggeations.
Well Done HES

*Update 21st Sept 2024*
Awful customer service. They need training on how to work with people who have a disability. Absolutely appalling.
- They sent through a wad of paper work that made zero sense due to their portal not working.
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Extremely Poor Service and Inaccessible Funding Portal

I’ve had an extremely frustrating experience with Home Energy Scotland. Their funding portal is not user-friendly at all—it's practically impossible to navigate, and the access codes provided simply don’t work. As a disabled person, I find it appalling that I have to apply for funding on my own, without any meaningful support, and they seem to have made the process as difficult as possible.

I'm trying to insulate my home for the upcoming winter, but I've gotten nowhere despite numerous attempts. The lack of assistance and the broken system are unacceptable. Overall, the service has been very poor, and I would not recommend Home Energy Scotland to anyone, especially those who need extra help.
My home is an F rating…..
Doesn’t get much colder than this :-(

HES provided all the information and assistance I needed to apply for a grant to support the purchase of an air source heat pump to replace my gas central heating. Their service was very helpful and their response to my emails was timely.

I spoke to a well informed person, who answered all my questions, suggested options, listened very well and fed back recommendations.
If only all dealings with government departments were so good.

Phoned to ask for help in deciding whether heat pump suitable for my home which is an older building. Advisor very helpful, gathered relevant information, gave me relevant information and set things in motion for a home visit which was also very helpful input to my decision and has clarified my options so I know how to proceed. I didn’t try getting in touch via the website although I had visited it for information - I prefer human contact so used phone option to get started. Thanks to both phone advisor and energy consultant.

The staff was friendly treated me with respect and was very understanding with my question and worries, they kindly went over everything I had to ask about, I was happy with the answers and support,and advice and I have took on board the advice that was given,and thank you for this service, I will certainly be recommending home energy Scotland to friends and my family,thank you

Produced an energy report within 2 days which helped us achieve elegablity for a grant that was to be discontinued at the end of July.
Staff patient and helpful.
The service was even readily accesible by phone!

The most stressful period of my life! The Portal just doesn't work. You can't attach documents without getting error messages. Too many of the call handlers work from home and cannot answer difficult queries. I too am worried about my Renewable Installation dates. Already put back one. Still waiting on drawdown.

If you go down the route of using home energy Scotland, prepare for the most stressful process you have ever experienced, with no hope of actually ever speaking to someone. I started the process of applying for funding on 23 May 2024 today is 23 July 2024 and it's still ongoing. I'm not even at a point of being able to draw down funding yet, it was only approved last week and they haven't sent me the required documents to sign to request the funds.

Don't bother trying to contact them, you'll never hear back. I was promised an urgent call back 7 weeks ago, yet to be called back. If you get put through to the 3rd party overflow team, just hang up. You'll give all the details around your request and that will be the last you hear, you'd be better off just writing it down on a piece of paper and chucking it directly into a bin, as I assume that is what happens at the overflow team.

The application process is a joke, the communication is significantly worse. If you go via them for funding, be aware there is a portal where they request info. I wasn't told such a place exists (had to google it) and the info they request, should have been included in the application, but wasn't. If you ask any questions via the portal, you will hear nothing back.

Honestly in any other walk of life the non existent customer service would result in significant changes.

I'm writing a letter of complaint to them because of my experience, mostly to help them change going forward, however I fully expect it to end up in the same place my multiple requests for call back has ended up.

If you can, take out a loan or pay independently for whatever you are looking to contact them about, I promise you the APR on a loan would be far less painful than dealing with them.

Also 1 star is far far too high a rating for them, I just can't give anything lower.

Edit - I have called again to request a document, they have tried to do the same thing they tried 5x before with no success and are trying to fob me with off with it can take 5 mins for an email to come through. They told me they would send this email 5 days ago, then again 3 days ago and again 2 hours ago, and once again 20 mins ago (each time I have had to contact them to ask for it to be sent). I am not sure what email server they are using that needs multiple days and attempts at sending an email. It really is definition of madness stuff at this point.

I cannot emphasize enough how much of my time and energy has been spent trying to deal with this absolute joke of an organisation. If we are serious about moving to renewable energy, then this needs to improve as the biggest stumbling block to moving to heat pumps/solar etc is Home Energy Scotland.

The absolute pits. If I could give zero stars I would. Still trying to get them to release funds after months and months of useless back and forth even though my application was approved 6 months ago. What's the point of approving a funding application if you're not going to release the funds?!! Been jumping through hoops for these people and getting nowhere. Seriously wish I hadn't even bothered. Currently 7 grand in debt because of this, with no sign of receiving this money.
Do not apply for this grant unless you actually already have the money… which completely defeats the purpose.

Really informative, clear, supportive and useful information. Totally free and tailored to my property and needs. Thank you so much!

Hi
We applied for a grant for a new boiler as British Gas condemed ours on a service/Survey they did, they also wanted over £4000 for a replacement boiler. So we now have no heating or hot water. applied for this grant being disabled from Home Energy, lady was very helpful with the application and it was agreed new boiler and windows, a couple months wait for a survey is past and gone and no more communication we are a priority? Still waiting and it cold. Ps I am 74yrs old comeon pls make an effort.
Added Note: we have now been serveyed today 08/07/24 and marked as priority for heating. I have to say that companies reading comments on trust pilot do make a effort to bring satisfaction to there clients. Thank you Homeenergy and Trustpilot :)

I spoke to two gentlemen regarding my enquiry. Both were very helpful, courteous and professional and helped me through the Blue Badge ULEZ exemption without making me feel like an idiot! Thank you Home Energy

I have serious concerns about the poor fulfilment service being provided by Services Delivery Scotland on behalf of the Energy Saving Trust / Home Energy Scotland.

I applied successfully for a loan and grant last September. Since then, communication with Services Delivery Scotland has been extremely frustrating at best and completely unsuccessful at other times.

When I applied for a payment in connection with a deposit for my heat pump installation in December 2023, I received no acknowledgement of this.

I finally made phone contact with someone who talked me through the process of writing the necessary email, which he dictated and asked me to write down, to confirm the validity of my application. There was no mention of this process in the copious paperwork provided with my acceptance letter; it would have been much easier if this step had been documented there. I also received no notification that the money had been paid in to my account nor any details of whether this was considered to be part of the grant or the loan. It turned out to be the latter but again I received no notification of how much would be withdrawn monthly from my account or when this payment would be taken. I eventually made phone contact with someone who helpfully explained the situation and sent me an email with the details. I gather that I was supposed to have received a printed copy of this document. To date, this has not been delivered.

The installation of my heat pump and solar panels has been delayed by problems with getting a builder to carry out preparatory work. I am unlikely to have everything installed and a new EPC carried out within the original 9 month period so I have now contacted Services Delivery Scotland to notify them that I would like to extend the period to make my claim. I was advised that the necessary form to apply for this would be emailed to me within minutes of my phonecall. So far, several days later, I have not received this.

Although the scheme is well intentioned and the initial consultation and approval were efficient, my experience of the fulfilment side has been extremely frustrating and anxiety inducing. I have committed to expensive energy efficiency measures for my house and cannot afford not to be reimbursed fully for these but my dealings with Services Delivery Scotland do not fill me with confidence that this will happen.

I find it ironic that so many people on this site have expended so much energy in their apparently generally unsuccessful dealings with the Energy Saving Trust. I've now contacted Service Delivery Scotland (?) through every channel that I can find and hope that this results in some progress. If it doesn't then I'm facing a serious problem.

Are you run by the same people as the Student Loans Company? They are the only other organisation that I have come across approaching your poor level of service and incompetence.

I would really like to see the planned flow through the organisation for a funding claim. We actually have the heat pump being installed right now and are wondering how you expect us to pay for it?

We have done everything requested in good time and gave two weeks for the 60% drawdown of funds to pay the installer, you said thanks, we'll do it go ahead and then later said, that actually we had to fill in another form so did nothing.
We have chased you all week, every time we get a different person on the phone, every message though the portal is replied to by a different person.

When you call up sometimes you are not even put though to the actual people " dealing" with your claim (no idea what they are actually doing) and spent a long time talking to a very polite lady explaining that the contractor was in the other room working and we had received no funds who listened but clearly could do nothing and had no access to our information as she then asked what the funding was for, was it insulation? (it's an incredibly expensive heat pump) presumably she was just being paid to have nice chats with people.

They keep telling us to contact them though the magical portal but it is useless. On Friday they said they just needed to check out our supplier, even though we chose them through their site in order to qualify for the funding, they haven't done this and it is now Tuesday, our supplier has had no contact from them. Then yesterday they said they needed ID documents to process the claim, even though we have got to the point where they have run a credit check (apparently- who really knows) and asked me to send the documents, I did this immediately as a reply to the message that a received through their own portal, two hours later, can you send them by email. which I have done and they have done absolutely nothing?

I am so angry at being passed from person to person and no one actually doing anything, no named contact to deal with, no really idea of what on earth is going on, yet they have said go ahead with the actual installation. We are supposed to have 60% of the funds by now and the installers will be done on Thursday and will be expecting the rest. what on earth are we meant to do and why has a supposedly reputable company put us in this position? The whole thing feels like a scam, though perhaps if it was it would be better run.
I am sorry for the long and complicate review, this is my first port of call and I am going to call them tomorrow and simultaneously escalate it to the FOS.
I would advise thinking very carefully before committing to taking a loan or grant with them, we have in theory arranged both. I don't know how far you can go with drawing down an "advance" (what a joke) 60% but I would try to get that money before you let anyone do any work. It would help if they published a flow chart for the claims process so you could see the steps.
I don't know who was paid to design the system but it is terrible.

Unbelievably helpful and knowledgeable people work at HES. Thanks for your great support. I'd recommend them to anyone.

My recent contact with HES was to give feedback on Spray Foam Installation we had done at our home last year.
The person we spoke to noted my feedback and was very helpful in providing useful advice and information for possible future options to make our home more energy efficient. So a very good service from HES.
I also wanted to highlight a concern that I and others have regarding finding “trustworthy” companies to carry out energy efficient work, as there are companies out there who are more interested in selling their products than genuinely meeting the needs of the house.
This is a particular concern for older people like myself and i am hoping that HES and Energy Saving Trust can do something about this very real problem.