They apparently switched us to 17.15p per unit in December from our old 9.5p rate. Just found this out now as we’ve just got the bill. Blogged the details – Click ‘Blog’ up at the top if you are remotely interested in such dull things. I’m a bit cross mind.

Anyone else suffered the ‘rolling contract’ issue as a small/medium business?

Ouch

Sounds like you need to turn the coffee machine off overnight.

jeezus – how bigs the office!?

I was more thinking that the big bill was something to do with the switching from 9.5p to 17.15p my self.
Coffee machine is always off overnight, not a single fillament bulb in the building and we have a computer switch off policy.. blah blah.. in short, we don’t waste it if we can help it.

Two floors.. 9 staff

Jeeeeze – that’s pretty scary.

17.9p is steep – is it a business rate or something?

what did npower have to say?

Oh and because we don’t pay by DD there’s a 2% surcharge.
Now I love Direct Debits. They are great. But with our subs we discount the rate for using it rather than charge extra for those who don’t.

It is a business tariff. Called them yesterday and the account lady said they’d pass my details to their sales dept who would call back to see if we could get a ‘more competitive rate’. Google research wodl suggest this is pretty common and the prospects of getting a competitive rate are quite remote. They can do this apparently because I didn;t write to them in September to tell them I wanted to leave them. Thing is in September I didn;t want to switch suppliers as I was reasonably happy with the rate we were paying at the time. Can’t quite make sense of that. Seems that if we are happy with them they charge us more. If we are unhappy we leave, but only with 3 months notice. Now we’ve missed that September deadline we are stuck with them for another year at this new rate, until I can write to them next September to tell them we want to switch in December.

No call back yet. I’ll give them another 20 minutes before I go for them!

Same difference apart from marketing, Mark.

I had the same issue with British Gas (electric supply), my wife (who works with me) managed to negotiate it down from something like 22p per unit down to 7p a unit and they back dated it from when we moved into the new premises.

Are you not near steep water in streams / rivers?

http://www.navitron.org.uk/category.php?catID=70

We have a canal lock right outside 🙂

Bugger the canal – get them turbo trainers wired in!

Oh and because we don’t pay by DD there’s a 2% surcharge.
Now I love Direct Debits. They are great. But with our subs we discount the rate for using it rather than charge extra for those who don’t.

Funny… that sounds like a hidden administration charge to me. Personally I think they’re wholly unreasonable, but not everyone agrees 😉

Bad news on the electricty bill, but it still sounds like a lot. Do you have electric heating?

Jezzuusss … £777 … your neighbour might be borrowing your electricity for the upkeep of his / her “garden” in the attic?

Do they not have to notify you of any changes in their charging before they do it?

Did they inform you of the price rise, per unit, at the time eg in December?

Mark – Administrator

We have a canal lock right outside [:-)]

Check out the Low Head ones then 8)

Mol, it’s not the same. We just took Direct Debit provision of our subs in house and we definitely started from the current subs rate and went down. yes.. definitely went down, reflecting the reality that DD subs are cheaper for us to run and get a better renewal rate and so we can pass on savings and make them cost less.

Surely the hamsters that ran the old forum are out of a job now, can you not use them to power a generator?

The small print suggests they don’t have to warn us that the notice period is due. And they can change the rate at will of any new contract. The contract renewed automatically as soon as the notice period deadline in September passed. Apparently if we’d given them 89 days notice we would have been told we were too late and that we’d have to wait another year to give notice again. In short, their contract seems tight and they do this a lot it would seem.

About to call them now and see what they have to say.. standby..

Switch everything off and i mean everything, at the plug, not the fuse box, and see if the meter goes round or the figures move, may be a dodgy meter, or even dodgyer meter reader.

Going to check everything consumptionwise, but the issue is not the amount (weel it is.. it’s mahoosive!) but the massive increase in the rate they’ve stuck us with.

But from 6th December to 19th February we apparently used 3218 kwh!

That’s rather a lot!

It’ll have been the fairy lights on the Christmas tree

Yeah, get to the meter and check. They do f*ck up the meter readings a lot.

Utility privatisation was sold to us by Thatcher’s government as giving the customer choice and cheaper prices due to the introduction of competition. It was all supposed to be regulated too. (no i’m not pro-labour or pro-liberal btw)

All I can see are companies concocting the most complicated tariffs, with restrictive terms, being able to contractually lock us into bad deals which only serve to boost their margins.

It feels like we are the mugs to be taken advantage of and the regulator lets them get away with it.

Why can’t the regulator grow a set of balls and force these companies to charge one price for their energy, regardless of how and when a customer pays? (like it used to be – bar economy seven) Contracts should be be no more than 30 days and rolling.

If an energy company truly believes in offering a competitive deal, it wouldn’t need to create such a minefield.

Basically. all these energy firms are conning us!

I switched from N-Power last month. They were penalising me for my loyalty by not automatically switching me to a better tariff when one was introduced. When they asked me why I was leaving I told them that they should automatically keep their customers on the best deal. They told me that the onus was on me to go online and make the switch, but at no stage did they tell me a better deal was available, or suggest that i could do this. I only discovered they had 14 different tariffs when i went online to seek a different supplier.

I’m resigned to the fact that unless you keep tabs on absolutely everything you pay for these days, you’re gonna get screwed! Most people are too busy or simply don’t realise this, but what a lot of hassle! There is no customer care, no concept of customer with these firms. Only the agile avoid these scams, the rest pay.

Many are buying log burners and finding alternatives. I can only see this trend increasing.

The problem is we spunked away the proceeds of North Sea oil instead of investing in nuclear energy. We flogged everything off to foreign companies and now buy most of our energy from Russia and France. Strategically, the UK is is a weak position, so expect energy prices to stay high and then increase.

I’m sorry Mark!

Brilliant web forum though – I never ranted so much in all my life! 😆

Matt’s beard trimmer!

Matt’s beard trimmer!

Would’ve thought that would need to be petrol!

just finished a meeting where one of the things on the agenda each week is gas cost’s. We saved just a tad over £2300 last week after the boss negotiated a reduction from 2.95 too 2.17 a unit 😀

Defo check the meter. Not that it makes any difference. I gave meter readings regularly and they f**ked up my bill massively once. Asked them how come when I provide meter readings and they said “Oh we don’t actually use them, we just estimate”. Err, but you ask for meter readings so you don’t have to estimate?! “Yeah, its a bit of a flaw in the system”.

Who’s got the smiley banging his nut against the wall?

Oh, and EST, not that it sounds liek you need it.

Regulators have no balls as they want a nice job on company boards when they move on. That won’t happen if the rock the boat of the old boys network or cut down on thier pocket money.

Utility companies all have overly opaque charging methods.
Impossible to find the ‘best’ deal. Even those working in the industry can’t tell you where to place you bets, which is what choosing a tariff is like at the moment.

I have to agree that any from of differential pricing based on payment method amounts to the same thing to the consumer, whether ‘discounts’ or ‘charges’ are made. No point moaning about it though, just go DD if it’s cheapest. Although DD with utility companies can leave you with a nasty shock/hole in your account. You’re safe setting up a DD with Singletrack though*.

*I’m not a financial adviser, so don’t try and sue me if I’m wrong. Please.

Top tip 😉 – only fill the kettle with the water you require. A kettle for one cup of water takes 40 seconds to boil. A full kettle takes 3 minutes. You will save 2minutes 20 seconds and 1.1p each time you boil up. For an average household this is £16 a year. 9.33 minutes wasted each day adds up to a staggering 56 hours a year.

Small savings all add up. I have reduced my electicity consumption by 10% year on year. Mainly by switching off lights and unused appliances.

Things like fan heaters, cookers and tumble dryers get through lots of energy.

Reducing office usage is almost impossible and the rates you are paying are shocking.

I think evilzone have hacked npower.

Spongebob is spot on with our energy supply situation.

Still not a nice thing with that price hike, our site bill has gone from £48,000 to £75,000 per month. Having said that energy is only 10% of our costs!

They can’t just put anything they like in the contract can they? It has to be reasonable. And this doesn’t sound very reasonable.

Has someone challenged this in the courts??

I’d change suppliers on principle.

http://money.aol.co.uk/npower-cuts-electricity-prices/article/20090316111711237907067

For Mark.