OT Energy T & Cs

[Andy Cap]

Sainsbury's online price freeze 2013

There was talk the other day of the confusing T&C of the power companies. This is my latest offering from the 'Big Switch'.

"Fixed prices until 30th June 2013 and benefit from a guaranteed minimum

8.9% discount to Sainsbury's standard rates as of 12/1/2012 No Cancellation fees Electricity customers paying by Direct Debit will receive a discount off their Tier 2 consumption charges (and night rates where applicable) of 1.429 p/kWh up to a maximum of £10 per quarter (or £3.33 per month for monthly billing customers) Gas customers paying by Direct Debit will receive a discount off their Tier 2 consumption charges of 0.196 p/kWh, up to a maximum of £65.00 per year (or £5.42 per month for monthly billing customers) A dual fuel discount 0.704 p/kWh off quarterly electricity Tier 2 rates (and night rates where applicable) up to a maximum of £15.00 per year (or £1.25 per month for monthly billing customers) is available"

Seriously, I can't be bothered to make the detailed comparison between all the difference versions of this nonsense. It's high time OFGEM standardised the charge bands across the entire industry.

Andy C

[Owain]

Better 5% "supply business profit" than 20% "public sector inefficiency and wastage"

And the lights go out a lot less than they did in the 1970s too.

Owain

[Mike Barnes]

Au contraire, standard charge bands would make it easy for us to compare suppliers, so it would encourage competition. Which is why the suppliers are heading relentlessly in the opposite direction. Google "confusion marketing" for more information and examples.

[Dave Liquorice]

entire

You are looking at it from the consumers POV not the corporate marketing POV. How can the marketing department justify their existance unless they can show they are being "innovative" and offering more "choice" by inventing new tariffs, retiring old ones, renaming others, every few weeks? The of course the regulator needs a measure on consumer "choice" as well to ensure that there is "competition".

I agree though that Ofgem ought to step in and make the companies present the basic tariff information in simple and clear manner with no marketing bullshit that is easy to obtain either by post or website. Even better if they insisted in a standardised format.

Example got a "dancing turd" junk mail the other day promoting some suppliers "low-carbon" (mostly nuke sourced) tariff. No where on it does it give the cost per unit, the *only* bit of information I need to make a decision as to see if it's worth looking into. But not surprised, after going off to look, 14.7p/unit v 9.5p/unit on nPower Go Fix 11 that we currently have.

[Andy Cap]

That's what I've just signed up to ! ;-)

I've just emailed OFGEM and they point you at this...

extract here, but there's loads more...

The Retail Market Review (RMR) Our current Retail Market Review identified several areas of concern that suggested the market was not working as it should. To address this we have (among other things): consulted on radical proposals to simplify and reduce the number of standard tariffs to help customers compare deals more easily proposed that suppliers auction off up to 20% of the power they generate to help other suppliers enter the market

I bet it wont go as far as I'd like though ! :-{

Andy C

[dennis]

It looks pretty simple to me. it just tells you how much cheaper than "the standard" offering it is. In my case it is £10 per quarter on the electricity and I don't recall the gas usage.

However you do need to know what their standard tariff is.

[Martin Brown]

Don't hold your breath waiting for them to get around to it.

The whole thing is heavily rigged against those of us that do not have the option of a dual fuel tariff and those afraid to switch from their original supplier - mostly the elderly and infirm.

I suppose we do have the option of mains gas in theory but paying £500k or more to run a gas into this rural village is quite off putting. YMMV

[Andy Cap]

..but to make a meaningful comparison you have to do the sums for EVERY possible market offering. That's the issue.

I agree with Martin Brown too, that the structure is loaded against those without gas.

Andy C

[Roger Mills]

Has anyone been offered any worthwhile savings by 'Big Switch'?

The best they can offer me is a saving of FIVE QUID a year (on a £1500 bill) if I switch to a different tariff with my *existing* supplier (Scottish Power).

Their auction winner comes out *dearer* than my current deal!

It might just be worth switching tariff since the new one is guaranteed until August 2013 - whereas the existing one comes to an end in September this year. Anyone got a crystal ball which tells them what energy prices will do in the next 18 months? I know that the general trend is *upwards*, but there have been one or two recent cuts and my current deal is "capped" - and so won't go up but could come down if prices fall - whereas I believe the alternative tariff is fixed, so will stay put if prices in general come down.

What a nightmare!

[Mike Barnes]

Dave Liquorice :

A what?

[Dave Liquorice]

See if you can find the current EDF Energy TV ads...

[Dave Liquorice]

Junk mail ie a bit of paper not junk e-mail... I only see two or three junk emails/month so forget that some people get tens a day...

Search YouTube for "edf energy advert" and it's bound to pop up. I think the dancing turd is supposed to be sylised owl but it didn't look like that to my daughter, she used the word "poo" though. B-)

[The Other Mike]

This is just the lull before the storm. The liberalised UK energy market was doomed to fail right from the start as there is zero incentive to invest long term*

• long term means more than 5 minutes, or 5 years.

The former being 60 times the attention span of politicians that fail to grasp the seriousness of the problem, the latter being the maximum period before an investor wants 200% of capital invested to be returned and the point at which the plant, built to only just do the job, is quite frankly knackered.. Meanwhile 45 year old coal fired plant and a dwindling number of nuclear stations keep the lights on.

In the 70's we had a thriving generation, transmission and distribution manufacturing sector that exported quality equipment to the world. Now we import crap that satisfies the money men and f*ck all else.

[The Natural Philosopher]

That is simply not true and in fact was being addressed by a government initiative till the bloody EU got in the way.

Except of course banking. We exported that all over the world

[Mike Barnes]

You see much more spam than I do, and more junk mail. I was fooled by your reference to "dancing", which conjured up an image of an animated gif.

Thanks, but I think I've got getter things to do than expose myself to crap like that. Even dancing crap.

[The Other Mike]

Not true? all of the 500 /660MW coal fired sites below were generating at very high load factors this last winter

Site - Years since Commissioning - Output

Aberthaw 46 1.5GW Cottam 43 2GW Drax (first half) 38 2GW Drax (second half) 26 2GW Eggborough 45 2GW Ferrybridge C 46 2GW Fiddlers Ferry 41 2GW Kingsnorth 39 2GW Ratcliffe 44 2GW Rugeley 42 1GW West Burton 44 2GW

(Commissioning date being defined as first unit full commercial load to grid, and control being handed over from construction to operations)

Exclude the second half of Drax and that is 42.8 years average

That is a total of 20.5GW or about 1/4 of the total declared generation capacity with some even older coal generation capacity in Wales and Scotland, Uskmouth for instance is 53 years old, albeit heavily refurbished

Meanwhile heap of shit gas fired stations built in the 90's are decommissioned and being sold off for scrap now they have pissed away significant and accessible UK gas reserves, they then build more in their place to burn imported gas

Now that is sorted out I have to ask, what government initiative?