OT: Energy bills for the elderly?

Clearly we're comparing apples and pears here - family of four where both adults work and the house is kept relatively cool vs a single elderly gentleman who keeps his house warmer. But having talked to him and wandered around his house, it's hard to see that he really is using this much more energy. For example our washing machine runs every night and often during the day too and we have an electric cooker. He washes far less and has a gas cooker; but he still uses twice as much electricity.

Aside - ignore insulation etc - these are flat-roofed 1920s semis, neither of us have much insulation and it's very hard to add any more.

So, from your experiences with elderly friends and relatives, is this disparity common?

- - - - - - -

It's retirement that does the damage. No heating from 8:00 until 6:00 changes to heating from ~8:30 until after midnight. Plus loads of cups of tea plus 300W plasma on all day etc etc.

Reply to
brass monkey
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Agree with much of that - but 300W for a plasma? Isn't that rather high?

Reply to
polygonum

Nope. Our 42" is rated at 290W haven't actually measured it but it certainly gets warm enough to be consuming that much.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Haven't you yet booked a seat in the local shopping mall, where you can cheaply sit all day leaning on your walking-stick and waving it at anybody that looks threatening?

Reply to
Frank Erskine

The solution may be to install a programmable stat that they don't understand and so can't mis-programme but one that has an easy short term override.

Reply to
fred

Frank, that's a bloody good idea. If it were'nt for looking after 4 shit machines I'd be there. Actually, except for the shit machines I'd be having a bloody good time. Beware people, don't get dogs within ~10 years of retirement.

Reply to
brass monkey

Back in London in 2002 I moved from working at home (similar usage to retirement) to working from a serviced office. My electricity usage halved though there was not much change in the gas usage - possibly because I needed to burn more as the place wasn't getting the benefit of all the stray heat from computers, photocopier etc.

Reply to
Tony Bryer

Kill them.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Wright

The plasma bit is right. It is where most of my electricity goes these days.

Reply to
harry

Mine is 380 watts. It keeps the place warm in the evenings.

Reply to
harry

LED/LCD uses less power.

Reply to
harry

Actually, it won't make that much difference to me, my wife is already retired and I work from home 4 days out of 5. Thick jumpers are much cheaper than heating oil ...

Well, coffee pot is on all day.

Or in my case, 3 or 4 computers.

Reply to
Huge

The inlaws won't change because the process scares them. They have no internet access and like to pay the bills in cash!

They're all like that. It's to make sure that you can't easily tell you're being ripped off.

--snip--

Reply to
Mark

We swap regularly but never find the savings are anything like as good as expected.

Reply to
Mark

disparity common?

Peversely, said mother doesn't get anything from the mass wastage. I manage to use less energy /and/ have a warmer, brighter environment.

Scott

Reply to
Scott M

I know. Same problem about paying by "new-fangled" direct debit.

They won't consider dual fuel tariffs either...

The one thing the modern consumer society has taught me is that the only way to get a good deal is to be serially disloyal to suppliers.

They value new business so highly and incentivise getting it. Once or twice I have been persuaded not to walk away by a particularly good last ditch attempt to keep my business. Most times though you just get put through to the "sorry you are leaving dept.". About 6 months later they then start the mithering phone calls to get you back. Crazy!

Reply to
Martin Brown

In article , Mark scribeth thus

Well if we didn't they'd have the shirt of our back at some locations as they sure do try;!...

Reply to
tony sayer

+1 !....

You'd think they'd do better to hang onto you. It must cost them more to loose existing customers?..

Reply to
tony sayer

Yes, but the bean counters have decided to concentrate bonuses on those getting new customers, as it's easier to count them. It pays the call centre staff to ignore leaving customers "So sorry we couldn't persuade you to stay with us." and then start calling them later on to get them back, at which point they are counted as new customers.

I vaguely remember reading somewhere that it costs between 5 and 10 times more to get a new customer than to keep an old one.

Reply to
John Williamson

Agreed. This is because business don't value their existing customers (enough). You can offer get a better deal as a new customer than as an existing customer.

Me too, although I have regretted it on occasion.

An it's usually only at this point they offer to put all their c*ck-ups right but usually I tell them it's too late.

Reply to
Mark

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