Direct Energy Home Services

After my mother died in Oct 2014, Direct Energy has been nothing but problems. I have lived in 3 countries (Canada, Korea, Singapore) and 6 cities and have never had such poor customer service. Their automated telephone service is multilayered and does not allow contact with an actual person. They could not do a simple transfer of utilities in less than 4 months. There was no contract.
Transfer of Shaw — no problem, done within a month
Transfer of Epcor — no problem, done within a month
Transfer of title of house — done in a day
Transfer with Direct Energy — multiple problems, multiple phone calls, multiple problems with accounts, balances, payments.
DO NOT USE DIRECT ENERGY.

Terrible Service. Worst experience.
I signed up 2 weeks ago and had a installation date for July 22^nd, 2014. Martha (the rep that I dealt with — 780−732−4932). They called me a week before and said my unit had not arrived and told me to wait till July 25^th, 2014. I said that was ok and we left it at that. They called me today (July 23^rd, 2014) and said that an electrician would have have to be home and they would have to do some pre-​work before the installation. We had to take time off our work and make sure someone was there). After confirming that someone would be home, Martha called me and said I would have to wait til August 1^st, 2014 to have my installation done as my unit still hasn’t arrived.
Why even sell me a unit that you don’t have in stock?
We quickly realized that DE doesn’t have any idea on how to schedule and maintain customer relations. I told Martha that I’m cancelling and she processed my request (without trying to make it up at all).

The technician that arrived was rude, unprofessional and felt that it was appropriate to leave domestic animals outside for the duration of his ~2 hr service call in –25 degree weather.
Nevermind the fact that he was 20 minutes later than expected from the phone call from his dispatcher… most of which was spent sitting in his truck in our driveway before ringing the doorbell.
The cost of this service was egregiously high ($ 420 — other companies quoted after the fact at $ 280).
Avoid at all costs.
FOLLOW-​UP: If I could drop this another star, I would. I discovered the next day that the technician had mis-​wired the system, resulting in damage to my $ 250 thermostat, a blown fuse (which I had to then go find a replacement for), and a general headache.
Summary: not only was the technician rude and unprofessional, he was also incompetent. We were better off BEFORE he came — at least we had a *somewhat* working system at that time!