I note Powergen have picked up some bad habits.
Electricity renewal offer, letter dated 30th. March, post mark 5th. April, Arrived today and must be responded to by 11th. April.
So that is actually two working days assuming the customer is not on holiday.
I feel the need for a complaint!
regards
I make it four days and six days if you were to reply to it via email or their site.
In message , George writes
Hmm.. have you looked at their site?
There is a pre-populated form which allows a choice of query/complaint but no opportunity to withhold consent to the renewal offer.
In any event, they do not know that I have Internet access.
They kindly request that I call their freephone number and speak to a dedicated business advisor. Assuming my advisory letter is one of thousands and that most of their call centre staff will be on holiday, I don't hold much hope.
regards
There is no obvious E-mail address. One may be found from their web site but they do not know I have access.
What are they charging per unit ?
I moved to
They're also the only supplier i've found who clearly state their=20 prices without you having to escalate a complaint from the normal=20 call-centre muppets.
Gas:
NT
In message , Colin Wilson writes
Bearing in mind these are business premises.......
Standing charge 22.45ukp per quarter, first 750 units at 12.08 and additional at 10.18.
VAT and climate charge levy on top.
That's interesting.
I have access to a *group* buying arrangement but have not previously bothered because of my relatively low consumptions.
In digging through the small print of the agreement I see there is an E-mail address direct to sme terminations.
regards
Scottish Power are OK. Prices are easily accesible 3 clicks down from the home page and not hidden away. They even sent me a complete list of their tariffs unsolicited, as my frozen price period is about to end, no mor 5.5p per unit!
Quite. This doesn't make sense.
Their pricing would depend on the market, and as a small supplier, may not enjoy particularly good rates.
If the objective is to be non-profit, then the profits should be distributed to the customers in the form of reduced prices. If the objective is to give profits to charity, they haven't done particularly well a that either.
In terms of giving money to charity, there are far more tax efficient ways to do that than via electricity purchase.
They don't vary their prices every three weeks like most suppliers seem to (the last increase was a couple of months ago, after 18 months without a change) - given the way the market moved substantially upward in that time, that's not bad going.
They're cheap for _low_ users, and are not aimed at larger users - their aim is make it affordable to people in "fuel poverty" situations.
I may be able to get mine for slightly less by shopping around, but for my usage it's close to the "going rate" - if that helps subsidise people worse off than me without actually costing me any more, that's fine by me.
Hell, if you ask me, we should re-nationalise the bloody lot - and I work in the industry.
That may be the case - it started off as a way to get cheaper supplies for churches / church halls etc, and they expanded it to help the worse-off in the community.
No wonder they aren't making any money.......
Which would presumably imply that their purchasing power is diminished since the user base is relatively small and the average revenue per customer is as well.
Not unreasonable. On a recent check of tariffs they turned out to be very expensive for my pattern of use. I already help people worse off through taxation.
I'd have hoped by now that these ex nationalised industries would have grown out of that mentality, but from recent experiences with Royal Mail, I know that not to be the case. I suppose it will take about another generation for that to happen.
I can see the objective. It seems to be ultimately self defeating because of its customer base - i.e. small usage; and therefore will not be able to secure the best market pricing.
I simply speak from my experience as far as design and spend on the network is concerned. Problems are not allocated the resources they need, and things like maintenance of existing kit on the network has been reduced by changing the schedules from 8 to 12 years.
When much of the equipment on the network is 40-50 (plus!) years old, reducing the maintenance checks is madness IMO.
Possibly, but is it actually breaking? Does it actually *need* to be maintained every 8 years? If it isn't failing then perhaps the original premise was overly conservative and 12 is good enough.
The alternative philosophy is to fix or replace when it breaks. That may be cheaper.
You mustn't be paying your bills by DD?
I'm with PG and the primary is 17.87 secondry 9.1
What are they charging per unit ?
I moved to
They're also the only supplier i've found who clearly state their prices without you having to escalate a complaint from the normal call-centre muppets.
Gas:
I swear BritishGas have a share hold in BritishTelecom
I haven't had a single need to call them, apart from giving them updated meter readings - those calls are free, and will recognise if you have more than one account and ask if you want to update them all while you're there.
But to answer the question, it would appear they're 0845 numbers - or they have a customer service email address for "management" on the back of the bill itself - and their website offers both an online webmail facility and a seperate published email address if you don't want to use the web form.
Depends what you're dealing with. If you apply the last sentence to a set of points on the railway, for example, then it is clearly not a good way to proceed. Use whatever equivalent example is pertinent in this case - there should be plenty.
To bring the point back on topic, my father was put in hospital by a piece of equipment on the electricity supply network in London that clearly should have been retired and replaced yonks before he had the misfortune to touch it.
Cheers
Tim
Try googling for failure rates on J&P breakers...
_when_ it breaks is too late - several accidents recently involving the above switchgear, and we lost one member of staff when one suffered disruptive failure in about 1985.
True, although in the sense of public and private ownership that one illustrates that incompetence isn't the exclusive preserve of either.
Fair point, but equipment can become faulty at any time and has a lifetime. Maintenance is something else.
Can't see an obvious link. Do you have one? Is it Johnson and Phillips (Pakistan) Ltd? this seems to be the first reference.
Has anybody done a study as to whether an 8 year vs. 12 year maintenance cycle would have made a difference? A sample size of one would probably make that difficult. Are the number of non-fatal accidents of sufficient number that a study could be done?
What do the manufacturers specify? or don't they?
Is it simply that the equipment is at the end of its useful life and should be replaced? If so, that's a different discussion.
In message , George writes
Oh yes I am:-)
When was your tariff last changed?
regards
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