Utility Bills Going Up?

[threegee]

Try this one (it's quick), and please report back here to other members, particularly if you save significant money:

 

www.energyhelpline.com

 

Know a better price comparison website that covers suppliers in our area?  Then don't keep it to yourself!

[Andy Millne]

Looks like ovo energy works out cheapest for me at nearly 11% cheaper if paid by direct debit. The first of the big guys is nPower with low customer reviews and then Scottish Power on a 10% discount to my current tariff with EDF

 

On a related note has anybody taken up any efficiency improvements using the green deal? It seems all of the past grants are now restricted to those over 70 or in receipt of certain benefits. I could do with a loft insulation topup and am also considering cavity wall insulation but some of the scare stories are putting me off. Anybody have any direct experience with local installers?

[Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)]

Never used the new Green deal. Only experience we have of the schemes, in the frozen outbacks of Seghill in our small timber framed bugalow, is the additional loft insulation we had installed, free of charge as we deserve it, November 2012. No cavity wall insulation as timber framed dwellings not suitable. Our installer, Karnheath Ltd, went out of business as the scheme dried up. The two lads installing the additional loft insulation worked at a speed that would have assisted Superman winding time back. They were trying to fit in as many as they could before the scheme dried up and they were paid off. In doing so one of them put their foot through the hallway ceiling. Two weeks later plasterer arrives and repairs ceiling - excellent skilled job, perfectly level with existing skimmed finish. Two days after that the Karnheath foreman, not painter, arrives to apply first coat of paint. Two weeks later 2nd team arrives to do second coat of paint. Again not painters, just the last two of the insulation installer that Karnheath were employing to the bitter end but most people can paint! Not these two. They had an ice-cream carton to hold the paint in and each had a two inch brush. Applying the paint in strokes of no more than 6 inches they were on hours and when the light streams in a certain way you can just about see every stroke they made. We got an unskilled grandson to tidy up the mess for the price of his tea and two his nana's freshly baked cakes.

Since the loft (apart from the 12 sq meters boarded out to house the wife's stuff she can't bear to throw out) was insulated our energy bills have reduced. We continued to pay npower our normal direct debits and at the end of October this year, the first year since the insulation went in, we were refunded 30% of what we had paid. Difficult to completely balance the additional insulation against sever winter + good summer & autumn against amount paid but looks like it was a good move.

As for npower - following refund they reassessed our payments and increased them by 56% of what we were paying for the previous 12 months! Expected a reduction. The thought of starting an online/phone/written wrangle with npower over the next few weeks/months did not thrill me one bit. However whilst checking my on-line npower account noticed the section within Bills & Payments where you can request a reduction in payments, normally used for customers suffering to meet payments for whatever reason, so I filled it in. Stating my previous monthly DDs - their refunds - their new charges - quoting their TV adverts saying they were sorry but the fuel prices had to go up 10% etc. etc. I posted my case to them. Within 10 days, no hassle, no arguments, no letters etc. they reduced the monthly DDs to £5 a month less than what I had been paying last year.

So yes it was mad what they did with the price increase but also yes it was, taking the route I did, a pleasure to get it sorted as quickly and efficiently as I did. It may have been that I got the one customer service person that had a brain and could see the increase was mad so they sorted it out by using their common sense.

 

Moral of that lot above is:-

Karnheath were rubbish, but it got sorted.

Whoever wrote the npower suite of computations that recalculate and estimate future customers billing should be sacked.

npower customer services that picked up my online request deserve a pat on the back and a credit on their record.

 

(ps. feel as if HPW took over my body!) - Goodnight.

[threegee]

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/

[sharky37]

i cant see this government trying to help any body  . as long as they are happy  they dont care about   the voters .

[threegee]

i cant see this government trying to help any body  . as long as they are happy  they dont care about   the voters .

 

http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Take-action/Find-a-grant/Green-Deal-and-ECO

 

Or as Gordo would certainly tell you, it's a global problem:

 

Why is Germany so expensive?  Well the idiots have turned their backs on nuclear because of their tree-hugger lobby - Germans are always easily sold on crazy ideologies!  Things will only get worse there as they progressively bottle themselves in, whilst their neighbours gleefully build new nuclear stations on their borders to profit from their stupidity.

 

Why are we currently in trouble on supply?  Well... a certain former government couldn't make its mind up on nuclear and didn't put the ground work in place, so we have lost a decade!  Mind you the current lot have been slow off the mark, and it's only the stark prospect of the lights going out real soon that has actually got them off their backsides!  The net result of the political muddle is we are having to pay far more for nuclear than would have been the case if Teflon Tony had made a timely commitment.  The results of the politician's failures will be felt for decades to come, long after the true reasons are forgotten.

 

Note the relatively low cost of electricity in Paris where governments of all political shades have been firmly focussed on just getting on with it.  We can thank the French for their foresight, and their supplying us under the Channel.  Without the connector we'd be in a lot more trouble than we already are.

 

But...

 

 

The continued size and duration of this flow is open to some doubt, given the growth in demand in continental Europe for clean electricity, and increasing electricity demand within France.^[6]

 

In other words the French are eyeing the higher prices Germans will pay for peak demand availability, and we are in danger of loosing another 5% of our supply. We can only hope they plough on with their nuclear program apace.

[Orloff]

The power companies are privately owned, that's why  Mr Blair never built nuclear power stations!!!!!!!! The Evil Witch privatised nearly everything. To quote her own words all businesses "should stand on their own feet and sink or swim".

Since the rail was privatised it is costing us more to "prop it up" so the spongers can get their share payments (bonuses), than it ever cost us under state ownership, no matter how some people will twist the facts and have you believe anything else.

Don't get me started on NHS "trust fund status" now too many chiefs and not enough Indians, it is so obvious it hurts! 

[Symptoms]

Why should Fritz care?  Why should Fritz worry about his lights going out?

 

He'll march over borders and capture his neighbours' generating capacity!  He's done it before, he'll do it again!

[Vic Patterson]

Privatisation! I was just thinking about when in the 60's when it was decided to build Motorways instead of railways, what should the government be responsible for? During a war the rules will obviously change in the interest of the security of the country as in WWI and WWII, but under normal times what should be Nationalised or regulated/ controlled? the Military of course, The Health Care System? Natural resources? Utilities? the Transportation infrastructure? What should be regionally or locally controlled?

 

Here in Alberta Utilities were heavily regulated and it worked well, until our Provincial Government decided "in our best interest†to deregulate much of the system, now our utilities (especially electricity) are very expensive, the bills are formed in two parts, consumption and transmission (and written is such a way no one can interpret them!) a case of Government control that was welcome!

[sharky37]

it is not  only gass and electric that is going up it is the mps wages  . not much  said about them

[keith lockey]

With regards to nuclear power.

 

Last week I watched three documentaries on You Tube. One was on Chernobyl; one was on Fukushima and the other one was Three Mile island. All nuclear plants that were GUARANTEED to be safe; that were GUARANTEED to be completely fail safe, regardless of what might happen.

 

What we weren't told by our governments is the frightening part of it. (France is still in denial about the radiation cloud reaching its borders.) But it opened my eyes to nuclear power and i could see why Germany backed out of its programme.

 

I would recommend the watching of these documentaries.

[Symptoms]

And what about Windscale?  Our very own nuke accident.

 

Our younger viewers may want to Google.