A London-based UK home services company that bundles energy, broadband, mobile and insurance onto one bill, sold largely through self-employed Partners.
Utility Warehouse, usually called UW, supplies household services on one monthly bill: energy, broadband, mobile, landline and home insurance. Its own website says customers can manage one account rather than several, and the idea is to save people time and money. Its mobile and broadband services make it a telecoms provider as well as an energy supplier, which is why it sits in this sector. The company's website quotes more than 1.4 million customers, though other pages say "over a million".
UW is the consumer brand of Telecom Plus. Its website says Telecom Plus was founded in 1996 in a pub in Henley-on-Thames, and that Utility Warehouse itself was founded in 2002 in Colindale, North London. The stated mission is to help people stop wasting time and money. The pages we read give no longer list of company values. Wikipedia describes the business as bundling services to reduce costs and notes that it has no shops.
Wikipedia gives UW's headquarters as Colindale in North London, and the company's website names Colindale as its founding place. Its employees number more than 2,500, according to its website. Much of the sales activity happens outside the head office through Partners, who live all over the UK and sell by recommendation. The company says it has more than 77,000 Partners, who earn commission on new customers they sign up.
The Partner model is unusual and worth understanding before applying anywhere related to it. Partners are self-employed distributors rather than staff. Wikipedia describes it as a multi-level model and reports a 2017 Guardian investigation into how much distributors earned, and the company's response that many earn modest amounts. Employees at head office work in areas such as customer service, billing and energy operations, technology, data, marketing, finance and legal and compliance, supporting both customers and the Partner network. We do not have first-party detail on culture.
We have not researched entry routes. A sensible first step is to read the investor and about pages on the UW website, then look at the jobs advertised at head office. Roles that deal with customers and billing build skills in communication and accuracy, while data and technology roles suit people who like maths and computing.
Website: uw.co.uk
PURPOSE helps school and university students explore 62 sectors and over 1,000 entry-level careers in the UK, then connects them directly with employers.
Explore PURPOSE