Powergen 10% + 30% <rant>

[Dave]

Just had this price hike detals from Powergen. The much advertised (!) rise in basic rate IS indeed "only" another 10%. (Since last April that is),

However closer inspection shows that their standing charge per day has increased in a single step by a staggering 30 PERCENT. From 34p to 49p per day (They presumably don't put in monthly figures because it looks even more outragious an increase, from c. £10,20 to c. £14,40).

Actually, increasing the daily rate EVECTIVELLY PENALISES USERS WHO TRY TO SAVE MONEY BY USING LESS ELECTRICITY. This is truely outrageous in term of any "Green" policy and imho a very devious way of gaining more revenue.

I'm off to uswitch NOW. btw Anyone know if there's any body worth writing a complaint to - some Ombudsman maybe or DEFRA perhaps? Probably a waste of time but maybe a good way to let off steam.

btw please don't tell me we've had cheap supply from the North sea for years and all the rest of it - I know that already. I also know of this incompetenet governments energy plans and general policy methodology of retro-action. I've even hear that next year bills *may* come down when the new piplines from Holland and ? come on stream. Yeah and pigs might fly. As I see it Nuclear is the ONLY way to secure our future power supply and stop the Russkies turning off the tap when they want.

[elyob]

Money Saving Expert website is recommending "Don't Switch Now".

[Mark]

first 225 per quarter 11.35p then 7.65p for electricity inc vat and for gas first 1465 per quarter 2.619p then 1.902p. I used uswitch and was getting -£180 savings. At first I thought I could save £180 then noticed it was a minus figure. Mark

[Andy Hall]

It would certainly make sense to wait until all the players have played their hands before jumping supplier.

Last time this happened, a switch from supplier would have resulted in an apparent £250 pa saving. That was until the following week when it would have been a £5 one. I wouldn't waste my time for that amount.

[Andrew Gabriel]

The Government. What's happening now has been accurately predicted for the last 30 years, due to the energy policy followed over that period. Oh, and it gets a lot worse than it is now, both in price but more seriously in quality (continuity) of supply. The UK has enjoyed a high quality electricity supply for the last ~50 years, but that's just come to an end (for multiple reasons).

[Andy Hall]

Do you mean in terms of continuity, availability, price stability,... ??

What's your prediction on where it goes from here?

[Mary Fisher]

I don't think it's worth complaining to them. They don't listen to anything we say.

I'd have said longer than that. Our oldest is going on for 50 and she was under ten when I first heard such forecasts.

Indeed. So we have to make our own arrangements.

I've just baked enough bread for four weeks in a stone bread oven Spouse built last year, using one firing of waste timber. If I'd used the domestic fan oven it would have taken several days. Spouse is currently having a bath, having been made filthy by cutting up a neighbour's felled apple tree. We'll use the wood for making things and firing the oven in a year or so. He doesn't like baths, prefers a shower, but has accepted that no grid power will be used for a bath, unlike a shower, because of our solar water heater with pv pump.

Now I realise that such solutions (only two of what we do) aren't possible for everyone but I'm sure that everyone can make changes to his/her life so that power use is reduced. That would save money, which should be a spur!

Mary

[The Medway Handyman]

How very true Mary. And then they wonder why the election turnouts are so low.

[Guy King]

The message from "The Medway Handyman" contains these words:

Worse, they keep pretending to ask, then look all hurt when we still fail to take them seriously. It's 'cos their attempts to listen are so patently just glamour.

[Colin Wilson]

I swapped to Equigas and Equipower a couple of months ago, no standing charge, a fixed rate per unit with no "tiered" charge bands, and its a non-profit organisation (they use Southern to handle all the billing etc)

*are* listed on uswitch, but you need to make sure you tick "include social tariffs" and "suppliers you can't swap to through us"

[Sylvain VAN DER WALDE]

That's what I thought for a long time. But now, I believe that the seeming lack of action is due as much (if not more) to the incompetent and uncaring _Civil Service_.

Sylvain.

[Andy Wade]

Me too, nearly a year ago now, and no more price rises in that time - can't help thinking there must be some big ones coming up soon... Another advantage is that you aren't penalised if you don't wish to pay by DD.

[meow2222]

AFAIK the power supply companies dont owe you anything, they tell you their prices and you can choose to buy from them or not, just like any other business. I cant see any cause for complaint. Sure its annoying that energy costs are rising, but thats the way life is, and its not due to the suppliers doing anything wrong.

Yes we need eelctricity and gas, just as we do food, water, clothes, housing and so on. All these are supplied by an assortment of competing suppliers.

The reason people dont listen to complaints is because so many of them are valueless, and they just get fed up reading the same old crap. Maybe someone needs to develop some kind of system to automatically weed genuine complaints from all the junk. Perhaps start with a tickbox list of 'what are you complaining about', price rises, a staff incident, power cuts, etc.

NT

[Colin Wilson]

I've had no cause to contact them - and the bills are the clearest i've ever seen !

[elyob]

Sad thing is, uSwitch make up to £50 for every jump. Each jump pushes my cost up.

[Weatherlawyer]

Not quite.

The reason is that Thatcherism can't be undone. At least the utility was a cohesive unit when it was a national asset. As soon as the abortion was awarded to her asset stripping cronies, the valuable bits were hived off and all the property sold if it could realise the cash that paid for the aquisition.

Now the various channels including the complaints dept -which of course is underfunded, are burdened with a top heavy management channel where comunications were comprehensive.

And that is where the waste comes from and where the standing charge goes.

Remember that art appreciator that knocked the face off the idol of Margaret Thatcher and was fined or imprisoned for it? I wish he'd knocked the real version in her smirk. And got a medal.

This Tone the Clone crook and monkey pleaser, is not the sort of person that is likely to do anything about it. He has sooooo much sleaze gungeing up everything he does and there is no viable alternative.

Sack the lot before we have to hang the bastards. Sure we'd have a shambles but at least the anarchy would not be organised.

[Andy Wade]

They screwed-up my gas transfer by sending a wrong meter reading to BG. That took quite a few phone calls to sort out - each blaming the other

- until I got the refund I was due from BG.

The web site is crap and it took a few e-mails before I could register successfully for the on-line service (initially it wouldn't accept the customer a/c numbers I was given).

In their favour though, e-mails to customerservice@ are answered reasonably promptly, and now things have settled down there are no great problems, and the prices are good.

Estimated bills have been way off the mark, but I guess that's to be expected for the first year when they've no history to go on. Or does your new supplier get usage history from your old as part of the transfer process?

I was surprised to find that their gas bills use a different calculation methodology to BG: Southern apply the volume conversion factor (VCF) first, to give an adjusted consumption in m^3 (to two decimal places), which they then multiply by the calorific value (to 4 DP) to get the kWh used (2 DP), whereas BG give an unadjusted m^3 consumption figure (to 1 DP) then apply both the VCF and the CV (the latter rounded to 1 DP) in a single step to get kWh, which they truncate to the next lowest integer. OK, it only makes a few pence difference to a bill, but I would have expected the calculation method to be standardised across all suppliers.

[meow2222]

I know thuggie matcher changed the game, but now the utilities are competing companies, somewhat like other business sectors, and I'm not seeing anything different about gas & lec compared to other sectors that warrants complaint. I think its just a case of people wanting to be given sweets and moaning when theyre not. The moan is so widespread that people have come to think it has some kind of real validity.

reckon theres a long queue for that one. Probably for all politicians. The more work they put in, the more theyre disliked.

Its a real problem. I think its just part of the duopoly game British politics is. The 2 parties just hand power back and forth between them, duopolitically. Oh, the dodgy word alarm's gone off, gotta run.

NT

[Colin Wilson]

That`s not always the fault of the supplier - the meter readers are often employed by the host REC or subcontracted to the lowest bidder, not the supplier...

For Southern ? - I had no problems transferring via Ebico - it just took a little longer than I expected from start to finish.

AFAIK they don't get anything to work from - I was asked how much i'd like to set my payments to, and I picked what I felt was a slightly artificially high figure to begin with.

[Jason]

Don't bet on it. The places where the Uranium ore is mined, can just as easily tell us to take a hike, or sell to a higher bidder (e.g. China).

-- JJ