British Gas price hike.
Discussion
Hasn't taken so long for B.G. to follow Scottish Powers lead to announce thumping great price increases in the gas and electric domestic prices. All down to the 30% wholesale increase of last winter. Thought that the domestic price increases of that period accounted for that wholesale increase. When is the ombudsman going to sort out this problem of zero competition among the energy suppliers I wonder.
I saw a couple of blokes collecting up bits of timber left over from drain widening works adjacent to the A12 a few weeks ago, a scene straight from the 1920's.
I saw a couple of blokes collecting up bits of timber left over from drain widening works adjacent to the A12 a few weeks ago, a scene straight from the 1920's.
This makes a nonsense of changing suppliers until the rises have passed through the system. Only fixed deals make any sense and they're short term - I had the Price Promise 2010 which set my gas prices to 2006 prices + 2% from December 2006 until April 2010. I saved a good deal of money then but can't see any offers like that at the moment.
crankedup said:
Hasn't taken so long for B.G. to follow Scottish Powers lead to announce thumping great price increases in the gas and electric domestic prices. All down to the 30% wholesale increase of last winter. Thought that the domestic price increases of that period accounted for that wholesale increase. When is the ombudsman going to sort out this problem of zero competition among the energy suppliers I wonder.
I saw a couple of blokes collecting up bits of timber left over from drain widening works adjacent to the A12 a few weeks ago, a scene straight from the 1920's.
Gas futures for this winter are 30% higher than they were a year ago for last winter - i.e. it's winter 2011/12 the prices are rising for.I saw a couple of blokes collecting up bits of timber left over from drain widening works adjacent to the A12 a few weeks ago, a scene straight from the 1920's.
EDF Fixed Price 2014? Not quite as long a fixed term as your previous deal, but still pretty good if you think prices will keep going up for the next few years. Or there's their shorter term Fixed Saver V2, which trades off a shorter fix term against a useful reduction in the unit prices - after receiving our price increase email from ScottishPower and bunging all the figures into Excel, the FP2014 deal would have saved us around 500 quid over the whole term whereas the FSV2 deal will save us about 600 quid... OK, so we'll then need to shop around again next September, but now that we've taken the plunge to switch once, no reason not to do so again, and again.
Chris Huhne has crawled out from under a rock and was just quoted on the news as saying "I refuse to stand by and watch this happen".
Really ? so what are you gonna do about it then Chris ?
Bloke from British Gas gave the usual "wholesale prices gone up, we've been selling at a loss for 4 months". Really ? so their bottom line for this quarter will be in red ink then ?
I bet we see another rise before the year is out too.
Really ? so what are you gonna do about it then Chris ?
Bloke from British Gas gave the usual "wholesale prices gone up, we've been selling at a loss for 4 months". Really ? so their bottom line for this quarter will be in red ink then ?
I bet we see another rise before the year is out too.
I looked into fixing a few weeks back but couldn't make the figures stack up, especially as we're not huge users.
Getting any credit you've built up back from british gas is proving harder than it should be, despite their new online "my plan" thingy which doesn't work. "You need to be in credit through the summer sir because you will use more in the winter". Not £500 in credit you numpties, just give me my money back. Might have to go old school on their ass and go back to paying when I get a bill
Getting any credit you've built up back from british gas is proving harder than it should be, despite their new online "my plan" thingy which doesn't work. "You need to be in credit through the summer sir because you will use more in the winter". Not £500 in credit you numpties, just give me my money back. Might have to go old school on their ass and go back to paying when I get a bill
Crafty_ said:
Chris Huhne has crawled out from under a rock and was just quoted on the news as saying "I refuse to stand by and watch this happen".
Really ? so what are you gonna do about it then Chris ?
Bloke from British Gas gave the usual "wholesale prices gone up, we've been selling at a loss for 4 months". Really ? so their bottom line for this quarter will be in red ink then ?
I bet we see another rise before the year is out too.
"Bloke from British Gas gave the usual "wholesale prices gone up, we've been selling at a loss for 4 months" heard that this afternoon they think thet are like the NoW, untouchable, well lets see what happens if we have another winter like last year, will the morgues hold all the old folk who freeze to death over fuel pricing??Really ? so what are you gonna do about it then Chris ?
Bloke from British Gas gave the usual "wholesale prices gone up, we've been selling at a loss for 4 months". Really ? so their bottom line for this quarter will be in red ink then ?
I bet we see another rise before the year is out too.
ninja-lewis said:
crankedup said:
Hasn't taken so long for B.G. to follow Scottish Powers lead to announce thumping great price increases in the gas and electric domestic prices. All down to the 30% wholesale increase of last winter. Thought that the domestic price increases of that period accounted for that wholesale increase. When is the ombudsman going to sort out this problem of zero competition among the energy suppliers I wonder.
I saw a couple of blokes collecting up bits of timber left over from drain widening works adjacent to the A12 a few weeks ago, a scene straight from the 1920's.
Gas futures for this winter are 30% higher than they were a year ago for last winter - i.e. it's winter 2011/12 the prices are rising for.I saw a couple of blokes collecting up bits of timber left over from drain widening works adjacent to the A12 a few weeks ago, a scene straight from the 1920's.
Mojocvh said:
"Bloke from British Gas gave the usual "wholesale prices gone up, we've been selling at a loss for 4 months" heard that this afternoon they think thet are like the NoW, untouchable, well lets see what happens if we have another winter like last year, will the morgues hold all the old folk who freeze to death over fuel pricing??
BBC News let him getaway with using the Household business profit of £740m, when asked what Centrica Group profit was.... Never mind that Centrica also sells it's gas on the "wholesale" market. Essentially using this argument they can't lose, and we always do....'After buying North Sea gas producer Venture Production, as well as a 20% stake in nuclear generator British Energy, British Gas is now less reliant on volatile wholesale energy markets for the electricity and gas it needs to supply its customers. Now, only about 40% of the energy supplied is bought in, compared to 80% four years ago.'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/10/cen...
'Both the Conservative and the Labour parties claimed in the election campaign that they would introduce more competition in the energy market without specifying how. The existing big six firms are responsible for the vast majority of the gas and electricity supplied in the UK, making it impossible for a sizeable competitor to enter the market. Because the companies are also vertically integrated, which means they supply most of their customers using their own gas and power stations, or their upstream business, they are guaranteed to make a profit: when energy prices are high, their upstream business makes a profit. When the opposite happens, as is the case with Centrica and British Gas, the supply arm benefits.'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/en...
'Centrica posted pre-tax profits of £1.92bn in the year to December 31, an 18pc rise compared with 2009.
Helped by Centrica's successful gas exploration, operating profit rose 29pc to £2.4bn.
British Gas, Centrica's residential arm, reported an increase in operating profit of 24pc to £742m, as average gas consumption increased by 11pc, and electricity consumption by 2pc during the cold snap that brought much of the country to a standstill.'
crankedup said:
30% higher than last winter, I'm guessing that as always here in the U.K. the infrastructure is so inadequate that energy Companies do not have capacity for sensible storage. Also do these Companies not at least make some attempt at reducing their own overheads at some point, seems not, why should they bother it is obvious to everyone that competition in the sector is not working as it should.
Nationalise the industry, and introduce caps (inflation rate) on how much prices can go up by.Mermaid said:
crankedup said:
30% higher than last winter, I'm guessing that as always here in the U.K. the infrastructure is so inadequate that energy Companies do not have capacity for sensible storage. Also do these Companies not at least make some attempt at reducing their own overheads at some point, seems not, why should they bother it is obvious to everyone that competition in the sector is not working as it should.
Nationalise the industry, and introduce caps (inflation rate) on how much prices can go up by.The cap is, say, 5%.
Who pays for the other 5%? The taxpayer.
Anyway, how do you (or crankedup) *know* that the utility companies are NOT reducing their overheads? Of course they will have been, the more efficient they are, the more money they make. Some will, of course, be better at doing this than others.
Mermaid said:
Dracoro said:
So the wholesale cost goes up 10%.
The cap is, say, 5%.
Who pays for the other 5%? The taxpayer.
If the hike had been 50%, what would you have said? The idea is to even out the cost over many years.The cap is, say, 5%.
Who pays for the other 5%? The taxpayer.
If the wholesale cost goes up 50% and the cap is 5%, who pays the extra 45%? The taxpayer of course (i.e. you and me).
Dracoro said:
Mermaid said:
crankedup said:
30% higher than last winter, I'm guessing that as always here in the U.K. the infrastructure is so inadequate that energy Companies do not have capacity for sensible storage. Also do these Companies not at least make some attempt at reducing their own overheads at some point, seems not, why should they bother it is obvious to everyone that competition in the sector is not working as it should.
Nationalise the industry, and introduce caps (inflation rate) on how much prices can go up by.The cap is, say, 5%.
Who pays for the other 5%? The taxpayer.
Anyway, how do you (or crankedup) *know* that the utility companies are NOT reducing their overheads? Of course they will have been, the more efficient they are, the more money they make. Some will, of course, be better at doing this than others.
If the Companies are reducing overheads the customers haven't noticed in the bills sent out. Its nothing short of scandalous that they can get away with this, if these Companies were in the public sector the Red Tops would have been all over it like a plague.
Mermaid said:
Dracoro said:
So the wholesale cost goes up 10%.
The cap is, say, 5%.
Who pays for the other 5%? The taxpayer.
If the hike had been 50%, what would you have said? The idea is to even out the cost over many years.The cap is, say, 5%.
Who pays for the other 5%? The taxpayer.
Dracoro said:
Mermaid said:
Dracoro said:
So the wholesale cost goes up 10%.
The cap is, say, 5%.
Who pays for the other 5%? The taxpayer.
If the hike had been 50%, what would you have said? The idea is to even out the cost over many years.The cap is, say, 5%.
Who pays for the other 5%? The taxpayer.
If the wholesale cost goes up 50% and the cap is 5%, who pays the extra 45%? The taxpayer of course (i.e. you and me).
My suggestion is to even out spikes in energy cost.
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