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Energy companies and the ripping off

Its just a big cartel. The government wont do anything as they need to be seen to reduce energy consumptions.

Ive no problem with people and companies making money but there is no alternative apart from living like a caveman.
 
Eriktheviking said:
Its just a big cartel. The government wont do anything as they need to be seen to reduce energy consumptions.

Ive no problem with people and companies making money but there is no alternative apart from living like a caveman.
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There's a guy who comes to our factory and smashes up all the old pallets and takes them away. Uses wood to heat his food, water and house - he only needs electricity for lighting and his tv etc. Its clearly hard work but he finds a way around most of the cost.
 
japenesegardenlover said:
http://www.standard.co.uk/business/...-extensive-misselling-of-tariffs-8557798.html

Funny enough i was looking at them for my energy supplier for my new business, they all seem pretty bad though.

Seem to remember crawley had problems and i think gordi as well saying something about it.
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They tried to impose two massive price rises in 2 months on me.

I went ballistic, obviously, and got the second one defered for now, but it will get imposed eventually.

My argument is, in 1999 I moved in to my current property, with a monthly dual fuel charge of £49 per month. We have uprated the CH boiler, windows, all sorts, have no additional usage, but 13 years down the line and the demand is £179 per month.

You do the maths, and tell me the percentage rise in that time..........Justified? I think not.
 
Crawley said:
* I do believe that is a 365% rise in 13 years. Correct me if wrong.
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Is it not a 265% rise?


0% rise is £50, 100% rise is about £100, 200% rise is about £150. So £175 is about 250% rise.


But that's still ridiculous.
 
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Spursalot said:
Is it not a 265% rise?


0% rise is £50, 100% rise is about £100, 200% rise is about £150. So £175 is about 250% rise.


But that's still ridiculous.
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I'm no maths wizz but I think £179 is 365% of the original bill but a 265% rise. Either way it's ridiculous. Especially as energy companies make billions per year. Unfortunately there is no competition as they all fix their prices at roughly the same amounts, we need a "bank of dave" type supplier to come along and offer energy at cost plus 1% or something.
 
scaramanga said:
There's a guy who comes to our factory and smashes up all the old pallets and takes them away. Uses wood to heat his food, water and house - he only needs electricity for lighting and his tv etc. Its clearly hard work but he finds a way around most of the cost.
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I run my house on wood for Central heating and hot water, i wont lie it is hard work and i get the wood as a by product of my work.
 
japenesegardenlover said:
http://www.standard.co.uk/business/...-extensive-misselling-of-tariffs-8557798.html

Funny enough i was looking at them for my energy supplier for my new business, they all seem pretty bad though.

Seem to remember crawley had problems and i think gordi as well saying something about it.
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Mine was Scottish Power rather than SSE but to my mind there's not a fag paper between the lot of them.

I don't understand what was achieved by selling off the old gas and electric boards apart from a short term financial injection and persuading simpletons that they were share owning Tories and should vote for Maggie.

I'm under no illusions that the old gas and electric boards were efficient, well run companies but how about getting a top industrialist to run them on private sector principles and in turn every penny of profit would mean lower prices and the rest would be returned to the taxpayer to keep taxes down rather than pay shareholders dividends (I don't buy the claim that they only make £54 per customer per year either). I'm sure even the landed, property rich cash poor gentry with enormous draughty old houses wouldn't mind a bit of that right now.

In short, they're all at it, once one's been fined it will be like dominoes.
 
I love living and working in rip off britain..

Is there anything we dont get our pants pulled down over these days ??
 
markysimmo said:
I love living and working in rip off britain..

Is there anything we dont get our pants pulled down over these days ??
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THIS

I keeping thinking Im the mug for continuing to live here and not emigrating - convincing the wife seems an impossible task !!
 
Gordinho said:
Mine was Scottish Power rather than SSE but to my mind there's not a fag paper between the lot of them.

I don't understand what was achieved by selling off the old gas and electric boards apart from a short term financial injection and persuading simpletons that they were share owning Tories and should vote for Maggie.

I'm under no illusions that the old gas and electric boards were efficient, well run companies but how about getting a top industrialist to run them on private sector principles and in turn every penny of profit would mean lower prices and the rest would be returned to the taxpayer to keep taxes down rather than pay shareholders dividends (I don't buy the claim that they only make £54 per customer per year either). I'm sure even the landed, property rich cash poor gentry with enormous draughty old houses wouldn't mind a bit of that right now.

In short, they're all at it, once one's been fined it will be like dominoes.
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Now heres the thing, im a sort of tory well ukip now but near enough. But selling off our energy companies was a massive mistake, one that blair and brown were happy to continue. I have always thought that we should keep some companies like the energy ones from being sold off.

I see Sweden set out a plan over the next 20 years to have all their energy needs met from within their own country, really do not see why we can not do similar.

I find my own personal political view becoming ever more blurred because selling off our energy companies was wrong and i do not think it brought up standards, which is why im worried by this weeks developments in the NHS.

There is also a growing sense in me that something is very deeply wrong with this country, when i heard they were thinking of dropping the minimum wage. A couple of years ago i took a job for a few months down in southampton docks and i worked with hard working guys there who were on that and they could barely afford to live as it was.

To cap all that the fact that so many jobs are zero hour contracts or less then 30 hours a week, im starting to worry and am now of the thought that the tories have gone to far. I agree with cuts and we need to make more and painful cuts but the getting rid of employment law is a worry and does not strike me as the right thing to do.

Often when people have said about the torries doing things for their rich friends i just thought they had a chip on their shoulder but im starting to think they may have been right. Scary thing is blair was excatly the same and i imagine millband would be to.

We should be setting out a target over the next 30 years to bring back all our energy needs to belong to the state and to be met internally in this country.

Like you i can not believe that we could not run it better then a private company putting all the profits back into development of better energy technology. I wish we had civil servants who could actually think creativetly.
 
I work for an energy company, and whilst we're generally cheaper than most, our rates are still a lot higher than those that you'd have expected to pay around 10 years ago or so. It's not actually the case that it's an attempt to rip people off, the cost of buying fuel is genuinely very high. Hopefully most people will find that as the government tries to get energy companies to put customers on the tariff that works out cheapest for them, or at least offering less tariffs, thus making it more transparent, should save most people money.
 
philspursuk said:
THIS

I keeping thinking Im the mug for continuing to live here and not emigrating - convincing the wife seems an impossible task !!
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I honestly think that at some point soon the will be something that just snaps and we will have riots like 2 summers ago but this time instead of chavs kicking off it will be the workers.

When i see how much it costs my sister to stand on a train from suberton to waterloo everyday im amazed. Then the is working class be screwed from as far as i can see evry single angle. Something will happen soon.
 
japenesegardenlover said:
Now heres the thing, im a sort of tory well ukip now but near enough. But selling off our energy companies was a massive mistake, one that blair and brown were happy to continue. I have always thought that we should keep some companies like the energy ones from being sold off.

I see Sweden set out a plan over the next 20 years to have all their energy needs met from within their own country, really do not see why we can not do similar.

I find my own personal political view becoming ever more blurred because selling off our energy companies was wrong and i do not think it brought up standards, which is why im worried by this weeks developments in the NHS.

There is also a growing sense in me that something is very deeply wrong with this country, when i heard they were thinking of dropping the minimum wage. A couple of years ago i took a job for a few months down in southampton docks and i worked with hard working guys there who were on that and they could barely afford to live as it was.

To cap all that the fact that so many jobs are zero hour contracts or less then 30 hours a week, im starting to worry and am now of the thought that the tories have gone to far. I agree with cuts and we need to make more and painful cuts but the getting rid of employment law is a worry and does not strike me as the right thing to do.

Often when people have said about the torries doing things for their rich friends i just thought they had a chip on their shoulder but im starting to think they may have been right. Scary thing is blair was excatly the same and i imagine millband would be to.

We should be setting out a target over the next 30 years to bring back all our energy needs to belong to the state and to be met internally in this country.

Like you i can not believe that we could not run it better then a private company putting all the profits back into development of better energy technology. I wish we had civil servants who could actually think creativetly.
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Totally agree about energy companies should never of been sold. Call me a raving mad communist but I don't think a penny in profit should be made when it comes to energy then you see profits are in the millions and millions and it leaves a horrible taste in your mouth akin to chewing on dot cottons tampon.
 
Do any people on here live on their own if so - whats the average cost of utilities in an average month? Im talking, gas, electricity and water.

Thanks
 
Swifty said:
I work for an energy company, and whilst we're generally cheaper than most, our rates are still a lot higher than those that you'd have expected to pay around 10 years ago or so. It's not actually the case that it's an attempt to rip people off, the cost of buying fuel is genuinely very high. Hopefully most people will find that as the government tries to get energy companies to put customers on the tariff that works out cheapest for them, or at least offering less tariffs, thus making it more transparent, should save most people money.
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There's a smoke screen out there as well that blurs the truth, energy company A may well buy energy from energy produce B, what they don't advertise until pushed is that company C owns A & B, so when A moans that it's only passing on the prohibitive costs passed onto to it by B they're blurring the edges in exactly the same way as Starbucks blurred their supply and royalty chain to disguise their profit margins, all legal but perhaps not ethical, wouldn't it have been nice for a government to own a well run, ethical, lean, energy company run for the benefit of it's consumers?
 
A consumer-oriented government that wasn't in bed with big business would put in place subsidies/grants/tax breaks to install solar panels on your house
 
Spursalot said:
Is it not a 265% rise?


0% rise is £50, 100% rise is about £100, 200% rise is about £150. So £175 is about 250% rise.


But that's still ridiculous.
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This is the problem I have with this issue when people start talking about things like energy prices, this is perhaps the most basic and flawed way of interpreting the data. I'm not saying the energy companies AREN'T ripping off consumers, but lets at least look at the real facts.

First off, the figures are not adjusted for inflation. £49 in 1999 is closer to £68 today. Not a monumental difference, but a difference none the less and should be remembered.

Next, here are a couple charts on the spot prices for oil and natural gas (in USD) adjusted for inflation. Notice that on the charts, 1999 is a historical low in natural gas and a near 40 year low for oil.

gas-prices-inflation-adjusted.jpg


oilprice1869.gif


Also lets remember that in the last decade, Green issues have come to the forefront of politics in the form of extra regulation. I'm sure this has resulted in some increase in price, for example I remember watching a show on the BBC not long ago which mentioned how one of Britains biggest coal power plants had shifted to 10% biomass.

Again I'm not saying there isn't something dodgy going on, but let's not go all Daily Mail and start throwing our toys out of the pram before you actually look at the facts behind things like these price rises.
 
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