How much do you love your energy company – enough to recommend it to a friend? How about if £50 was up for grabs? Richard from Suffolk is a customer of Octopus Energy, and now eight of his family and friends are, too, after he recommended the provider to them all through its referral scheme. “I really think [referral schemes] are a good idea. It’s an incentive to swap – without it, I think people wouldn’t bother switching and would carry on as they were,” he says. For each referral, Octopus gives £50 of credit to the referrer and the referee. Richard says his dad was delighted with this arrangement. “That paid for a month’s worth of electricity for my dad, which he was really happy about,” he says. Across energy, banking, shopping and entertainment, there are lots of companies and brands offering existing customers perks for bringing in new business. How it normally works is that a customer shares a link or code with a friend or family member, and then the referred friend …