The first gas meter reading taken at my g/friend's house after Powergen contracted out their meter reading to Meter Reading Services Ltd resulted in a bill which was about 3 times what it should have been.
The idiots had submitted the reading as from an Imperial meter, whereas it is a metric one, but it took me five months of phone calls and letters before they were convinced, and eventually when I started talking about compensation they gave her 5 months of free gas.
In this area, if you have a meter fitted, you cannot go back to quarterly billing, and when the house is sold it remains metered. This could be an adverse situation if a large family were interested in the purchase, but as I live alone I would certainly save money by having one installed.
I have heard though, that a more sophisticated and reliable meter will be available in the not too distant future, so I am uncertain whether to bother at this time.
I think (it's a while back) our water out was neighbours water in, just 2 meters. They /may/ have had a meter on their property as well, but apart from their son working with us, I had no other connection.
Each company sells many products across a broad range of fields of medicine. If the purchasing people are doing their jobs properly, they will be looking to optimise the pricing across the whole range of purchases. If the manufacturer wants to go for a high price on products which are exclusive to him then he can do that, but may lose business on others that are perhaps generics but sell in higher volume. All of the major companies own or have interests in generics companies and for that matter buy and sell them.
If your issue is that the drug companies should charge less than they do in general, that's one matter. They need to reinvest and they need to show a profit for their shareholders who are, typically pension funds and unit trusts etc. anyway.
If it's that you think that the NHS should get better pricing than it does because it's a public healthcare organaisation, I don't buy that argument either. It should negotiate on a normal commercial basis and that's that. If it doesn't have people able to do that, despite being the world's third largest employer, then some sackings need to take place or questions need to be asked about how useful it actually is.
No, I'm in New Zealand, the land of d-i-y and No. 8 fencing wire to fix anything. I'm in uk.d-i-y because you guys seem to discuss lots of problems that I have, or that I have already solved.
In recent years, power and gas utilities in NZ have been privatised and nobody knows which company caters for who.
A digger cut through a gasline next door and I phoned 5 gas companies to stop the leak, but they all denied responsibility.
Hi there, We went onto metered water by choice in 1985 after the kids left home. The first year the bill was half the rated charge and that relationship has remained more or less the same. I think metering is ideal for couples or single people, kids do tend to use more water than adults. I reckon the saving over 20 years has been =A33000+
I sincerely believe that water metering is part of the learning experience for children as well as adults. Parents don't usually allow children to waste gas or electricity, that can - and should, I believe - be extended to water. By charging for water used that can achieved.
We've had a meter for a few years, I've no idea of the financial savings because everything's paid by DD and budget and I don't compare bills. But when our grandchildren come to stay they don't waste water - they're not allowed to at home and extend that courtesy to us.
We don't waste water when camping either ... if we can manage on one container of water a day then why can't we at home? Except for the washing machine I can't think of any differences.
Err Railtrack was a private company responsible for safety, that was the problem, that is why people died, they died because share dividends / director bonuses were more important that mending broken track...
No HMG dept. stopped Railtrack from mending broken rails etc, only Failtrack themselves.
That makes no more sense than your other comments. Moral standards are a totally different issue to the effective running of a business. If that were not the case, there would not be a thriving industry in ethical investments.
In the case of water (and some other essential services), that is not the case though, they don't need to 'sell' a dammed thing and as long as they deliver the minimum standard (of safety) they need not invest in infrastructure and plant.
That was a problem of technology, it was solved once new technology was installed, after the outside suppliers had invented it.... The new digital exchanges would have happened regardless of who owned British Telecom. The high prices kept control of the requests for scarce lines, those who really needed them got them.
supply so
Well, that flies in the face of the reasons why water meters have been asked for and granted - they don't want people to use / more / water, they want people to use less!
railways
services
floatations had
Yes, in providing the funds to give certain people tax cuts, while others lost their homes to negative equity and their jobs to negative manufacturing / infrastructure investment. Never mind short sighted politically motivated interference in some industries, who's trade unions had cause trouble for previous Tory administrations...
Err, yes, the Tories did do all those things in their 18 years of power!
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