Bulb Energy

How it happened

Bulb was a UK green-energy supplier that grew rapidly to serve roughly 1.7 million customers, reaching about a $1B valuation by 2021. It collapsed in November 2021 when soaring wholesale gas prices made its fixed-rate tariffs unsustainable; placed into a government-backstopped special administration, its customer base was later transferred to Octopus Energy. Glassdoor reviews expose the grind behind the green-startup branding: employees described the flagship Energy Specialist role as an overqualified, metric-obsessed call-centre job with punishing per-ticket targets, understaffing and months-long email backlogs. Insiders also faulted a growth-at-all-costs approach with little regard for profit, and said leadership downplayed the mounting financial trouble even as special administration loomed and refunds stalled.

Employee accounts paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗. See our methodology.