Gas & Electricity

All I want to know is at what point does the drop in wholesale prices(now cheaper than pre Ukraine invasion)get passed onto us?

No one is talking about it!
 
bluealf said:
They tried to make out it needed to be kept on credit to pay for the oncoming bill, the guy was Indian and it was very hard to make him understand the problem from the off.

We got an online bill that said they would keep 245 but would repay the rest into the bank, which didn't happen.

We are with EDF (forced due to ours going bankrupt)

I also will admit that I do nothing and my wife is the boss of accounts lol

She just stood her ground and in the end demanded they returned our money, we sit and wait but she will be right back at them in a weeks time if nothing has gone in, woe betide the poor person who takes the next call lol
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Why not cancel your DD until you’ve used up your credit then restart it again?
 
blueinsa said:
All I want to know is at what point does the drop in wholesale prices(now cheaper than pre Ukraine invasion)get passed onto us?

No one is talking about it!
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From June hopefully. Unfortunately the energy suppliers locked in on higher prices like everyone else to ensure stock and that hasn’t been depleted yet.
 
gandalfthebrave said:
We had a £1100 gas and electric bill for March, which made me really look into this shit. We have a large house so I’ve never really quibbled before, but fuck it, enough was enough. What with all other bills going up too.

It turns out despite us giving the energy company readings each month, they’ve been billing us based on inflated estimates for over a year.

The bill should have been about £600, which is still a lot, and I should have looked closer before now.

Anyway, I decided I want to give these fuckers as little of my money as possible going forward so made a few changes.

Bought some Oodies for the whole family, myself includes (Primark ones do the job nicely!) - less than £100.

Changed the Hive settings to only reach the thermostat temp for about 3 hours a day (versus it trying to hit that temp all day every day before now).

The mrs had an ancient tumble dryer which was shite on energy. So I found a decent deal on a heat pump drier on Hot UK Deals which is about 70% cheaper to run. Paid £400, she sold the old one for £150 on Facebook - so net outlay was £250, but that’s probably gonna pay for itself within a few months.

This month, we’re on track to spend less than £150 on gas and electric all in, including standing charges.

Pretty chuffed with that and barely noticed any difference. Kids haven’t noticed, and the mrs hasn’t moaned.

Going to keep pressing on and aim to cut energy bills to sub £100/month asap.
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Exact thing happened to us being billed on inflated estimates despite them having our smart meter details, as we ended up with a £700 bill in February.

I raised it with them, and at a press of a button at their end, we went from owing £400 to being in credit of about £550.

I reduced our DDs for the next few months to the Barr minimum, to claw most of the credit back into our bank which has worked.

Chances the lot of them, everyone should check that their smart meter readings largely tie in with what they're being billed as I reckon this has happened to a lot of people that are unaware.
 
blueinsa said:
Yet they instantly raise prices even though they will have months of stock bought at lower prices?
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Well that’s not exactly true. OFGEM control the price cap and review it every three months hence why we should see the cap reducing in June. For many years we’ve enjoyed a competitive market but that led to a large proportion of businesses in the industry going bust leading to a non-competitive situation. History shows that when prices increase due to spike issues they generally take a while to fall back to the normal market rate and that’s everything. Businesses are loathe to suddenly revoke price increases to pre-spike values in case the issue returns but what tends to happen is they start to lose customers and new suppliers come on board to pick up the churn which in turn pushes the market back to the norm. It isn’t instant though.

You could argue the rate that OFGEM sets but without them it could be worse.
 
Citizen of Legoland said:
Well that’s not exactly true. OFGEM control the price cap and review it every three months hence why we should see the cap reducing in June. For many years we’ve enjoyed a competitive market but that led to a large proportion of businesses in the industry going bust leading to a non-competitive situation. History shows that when prices increase due to spike issues they generally take a while to fall back to the normal market rate and that’s everything. Businesses are loathe to suddenly revoke price increases to pre-spike values in case the issue returns but what tends to happen is they start to lose customers and new suppliers come on board to pick up the churn which in turn pushes the market back to the norm. It isn’t instant though.

You could argue the rate that OFGEM sets but without them it could be worse.
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Most of those regulators for gas, electric, water etc are all pretty useless imho.
One example: the environmental agency has the power to order increased investment to prevent sewage run off into rivers. It has never used this power.
 
Bill Walker said:
It's a business, there to make money and profits for it's shareholders and fat cat board, there is no sentiment in business, they don't care if families are freezing....blame Thatcher.
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Too easy to blame Thatcher. By the time she became PM all those public utilities were bankrupt and losing money. The taxpayer was having to make up the shortfall and there was no money for investment. What would you have done?
Admittedly much of the privatising programme was poorly done, some of which could be blamed on her and the ministers, but I dont know what alternative there was.
The key problem for all nationalized industry is investment failure. No chancellor is going to put billions into the tax regime to pay for it; not popular and would lose votes. Hence they ultimately fail.
 
KS55 said:
Too easy to blame Thatcher. By the time she became PM all those public utilities were bankrupt and losing money. The taxpayer was having to make up the shortfall and there was no money for investment. What would you have done?
Admittedly much of the privatising programme was poorly done, some of which could be blamed on her and the ministers, but I dont know what alternative there was.
The key problem for all nationalized industry is investment failure. No chancellor is going to put billions into the tax regime to pay for it; not popular and would lose votes. Hence they ultimately fail.
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She went big on the culture of privatisation. Promised costs would be lower because of competition. Water, Rail etc..Yeah right, how did that pan out ?.
 
Bill Walker said:
She went big on the culture of privatisation. Promised costs would be lower because of competition. Water, Rail etc..Yeah right, how did that pan out ?.
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Quite well, actually. It was about yr 2000 that domestic energy rose to its level at privatisation after many years of lower costs.
Myths abound, which is one way of getting the next policy wrong.
I still am at a loss as to whatever else could have been done.
For example, on investment. Imagine the Chancellor standing at the despatch box:
”So income tax will rise to pay for investment in sewer renewal and the increase in NHS provision will be postponed for 5 years.” Not many votes in that, but the sewers in Manchester for instance were collapsing all over the city, not having been maintained since they were built.
People forget, so Tony Blair when faced with the same problem of investment needed for new NHS hospitals, paid for them all with Public and Private Partnership deals and today all those hospitals are effectively rented from the private sector.
Calling for renationalisation is romantic but nobody ever says where investment will come from.
 
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We are being fucking fleeced.



It’s a national disgrace that certain parties are overseeing as huge companies literally money grab.
 
blueinsa said:
We are being fucking fleeced.



It’s a national disgrace that certain parties are overseeing as huge companies literally money grab.
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It is scandalous. Appalling that is no govt intervention to put a stop to it. How can people elected to represent the interests of their people let this happen
 
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