Northamptonshire ACRE Oil scheme in Syresham.

Background to Olive

As you may know, we have been running a bulk oil buying scheme since October 2011. We set it up with the key aim of helping residents in villages who are off gas to get the best possible price for their heating oil in order to save them money, especially those in fuel poverty. During the time it has been going we have helped our members to save over £198,500 against the highest prices quoted and approximately £80,500 on the average, on over 1.7 million litres of oil.

Last year we decided to move away from our old paper based system that was administered by staff at Northants ACRE and which had a membership fee to cover the admin costs. The old system was heavy on admin and resources and didn't give us much of a chance to grow the membership. Having a larger membership base means we are able to negotiate even better savings from the oil delivery companies for our orders. We had a look at a number of possible options but wanted one that would be easy to use, more efficient and be done online.

We are part of the ACRE Network of 39 members and one of our fellow members, Rural Action Derbyshire had been running the olive online system for quite a while. They are so pleased with what it has delivered and how it has helped them to grow membership that on their recommendation we decided to go with the same system. So from the 1^st August 2016 we began working with a company called eSmartMetrics to implement their online ordering system, olive.

Using Olive

To use the system you first need to register at: https://nacre.myolive.co.uk/registration/register.

Enter your details, an email and a password that must be 6 letters or longer and contain at least 1 uppercase letter and 1 number or symbol.

Once you are registered:

• You need to record your payment method – either debit or credit card (there is a 2% charge for using credit cards unfortunately which goes to the card issuing company) or you can set up a direct debit payment.
• You will see in the main menu an option showing all the oil ordering deadlines.
• You can place your order for oil at any time and it will be picked up in the next deadline.
• After midday on the deadline date, eSmartMetrics collate all the oil orders, negotiate with the oil suppliers for the best price, send you an automated email with the details of the price per litre and the total cost for your order.
• After 24 hours if you haven't cancelled the order they will take payment for your order automatically, place the full order with the suppliers and make the payment at the same time. This means you don't need to pay the oil company directly anymore, which quite a few of our members used to find a hassle.
• The oil is usually delivered approximately 10 working days later.

If you would like more details our FAQs will help. You can also download eSmartMetrics' privacy policy and the terms and conditions for use of olive

If you would like to become a member of Northamptonshire ACRE's bulk oil buying system but would rather we continue to administer your account, please contact us on oil@northantsacre.org.uk or tel. 01604 765888.

Our oil buying scheme is open to all off gas residents, community buildings and businesses.

And if you would like to save even more money, why not check out our olive smart