Utility Comparisons

[Win2Win]

Looking to save afew bob on the lecky....I nipped over to a certain switching site......

They reckon if I switch to BG, I can save £776 a year

I can't be reading all the waffle at the moment, so I know what Unit Rate 1 is, and Economy 7, but what is 'Unit Rate 2'? Usually 1/2 the price of Unit 1!!!

As a high consumer, is it better paying a standing charge, and gettng a cheaper Unit price?

....and what the hell is BG's 'Click Energy 5'??

Anyway, I don't think BG like me after getting the ASA to pull their ad off air

[Win2Win]

Is it my medication, or does the BG Price List, not contain prices for BG? http://www.britishgas.co.uk/pdf/click5_elec.pdf

[scoobydoo]

You need a degree to work your way through them all. & just as you change, you can bet that the one youve changed to and got, in theory a cheaper price with...puts their prices up a month later! Its happened to me twice in 3 years. In my opinion....it needs looking into and simplifying.

[Win2Win]

You gotta be kidding me

I'm with Scottish Power, so nipped to the site, and entered my details in as if I was going to switch to them, and they reckon I could save £255 a year This is with exactly the same details used for the quote off their bill

[scoobydoo]

You gotta be kidding me

I'm with Scottish Power, so nipped to the site, and entered my details in as if I was going to switch to them, and they reckon I could save £255 a year This is with exactly the same details used for the quote off their bill

Ahh...this is the old 'new customer' thing I think they have talked about. A new customer would get cheaper than yours ...but they already have you so you cant have it !!

[susanwells]

... I have just compared this past winter`s oil bills with those of the winter before. We perhaps used a tad more CH this April than we did in April 07 as we had very warm spell then and a cold one now.
This is a big house but the girls are no longer home so their rooms are not heated unless one comes to stay for a night or two. We don`t heat the main drawing and sitting rooms with CH - we use a log fire in one and a wood burning stove in the other. The top room which runs the length of the house is only heated when my husband is working up there - say 3 hours three times a week. I have thermostats on every rad, we have the boile temp on low unless it is bitterly cold - I hate over-heated rooms.
The Aga is oil fired. We put it put it out for July and August. We heat the bath water etc in summer via immersion heater, in winter via the oil boiler.
So I reckon we are as economical with heating as we can be and still stay warm.
The total oil bill for the year ending april 30 07 was 2,300. (rounded up to the nearest 100)
The Ditto to 30 April 08 was 6,700.
So with this absolutely ludicrous leap which can only go on rising, I am wondering whether to get out of oil altogether. I cannot see anyone saying it is going to come down in price so far as the eye can see.
I don`t want storage heaters. Can we have a CH system with a boiler fired by electricity ? The aga can be converted.
(There is no gas within 5 miles.)
Any advice ? I know elec. is costly but is it as much as this oil bill ?

[Win2Win]

I told all the muppets in the village last year not to take up the offer of free/subsidised oil central heating installations off the council.....I told the 'rep' they were very Co2 unfriendly (only 20% of our power comes from coal), and that prices would shoot up......they knew better

Our neighbour just had his oil tank filled this week, his first fill was £140 last year, this one was £320

[susanwells]

I told all the muppets in the village last year not to take up the offer of free/subsidised oil central heating installations off the council.....I told the 'rep' they were very Co2 unfriendly (only 20% of our power comes from coal), and that prices would shoot up......they knew better

Our neighbour just had his oil tank filled this week, his first fill was £140 last year, this one was £320

He must have a small tank !! It doesn`t in the least matter about CO2 emissions.. anything we do is a drop in the ocean anyway, global warming is not happening at the moment - since 200 it has been cooling (this is FACT ) and the science that says carbon emissions have anything to do with it is very dodgy. So much of this whole GW is a big con... read Nigel Lawson`s brilliant little book, AN APPEAL TO REASON and also see www.energytribune.com for the other side of the argument. And it has nothing to do with Climate Change - the earth`s climate has always changed for all manner of reasons we don`t understand, and will continue to do so regardless of us. GW is a separate issue and at the moment it is actually GC. In case you mention the ice-caps, only a very small part of the Antarctic ice-cap -the Western, is actually melting. The rest is thickening. The ice cap was a very great deal smaller when it last melted, several billion years ago.. long before we were around with our worries about carbon.
None of it would matter much - let them get on their bicycles, it`s healthier - if it were not for the 3rd world which will suffer MORE in terms of hunger and poverty and failure to move into the 1st world as a result of action to deal with GW than from any putative GW itself. It is happening now. The rush to stop planting food crops and give over the land to biofuels has resulted in less food and much higher price of food...
Meanwhile, to my small domestic trivia. We are stuck with oil I think but it will be worth our spending on a new much more efficient boiler.
They were conned to accept the free offer. But I know of a new housing estate about 15 miles from here which has the new water-filled electric rads which call themselves CH.. but each rad plugs into a 13 amp plug. You can guess how much they are costing - no gas anywhere for miles and they have had elec bills last winter (their first in the houses) of around £500 a MONTH.
All forms of so called green energy ( which I don`t believe in anyway) - solar, wind - are highly expensive to install and generate an absolutely minuscule quantity of energy. Another con. so don`t let anyone try to sell you a useless wind turbine or solar panel. Save your money and give it to the food programme of the UN for the Third World. They need it.

[Win2Win]

since 200 it has been cooling (this is FACT ) and the science that says carbon emissions have anything to do with it is very dodgy

That'll be in direct conflict with 10,000's of independent scientists, 1,000's of independent experiments all pointing to the same trend, and the IPCC, made up of governments of every major country in the world agreeing it is happening (apart from Saudi, but they sell the oil!!)

[bigcumba]

In case you mention the ice-caps, only a very small part of the Antarctic ice-cap -the Western, is actually melting. The rest is thickening. The ice cap was a very great deal smaller when it last melted, several billion years ago

I could be pedantic and suggest the icecaps actually didn't exist several billion years ago. The anti GW folk always point to the situation in Antactica as argument that icecaps are actually not melting, yet all other major icecaps and glaciers are losing volume at a horrendous rate. Greenland is losing ice at several times the rate it was in the 1980's. In 2006 it lost the equivalent of twice the whole amount of ice in the Alps. There are a few smaller glaciers in Iceland that I visited on holiday in 193 and 1996 that now no longer exist while the larger ones are shrinking rapidly, and some of the glacial tongues that branched out from the main icecaps have retreated up to 5 miles in 15 years.

If you really think that overall the icecaps are incresing in volume.... tell it to the polar bears...

[tophatter]

Regardless of whether you believe in global warming or not, surely for reasons of pollution, management of finite resources and supply and demand then surely dont it make sense to use as little fuel as possible?

I would not take too much notice of right wing economists writing books on the subject. Of course their is going to be people who say its a con. I agree there are some capitilists jumping on the bandwagon and making money out of it with consultancy work and carbon offsetting schems and nonsense like that but the people who are experts seem to feel we are experiencing some kind of climate change - its just the scale of it and if its manageable which is up for discussion.

The bottomline is, growing economies use more fuel. As China and India grow fuel becomes more expensive as does food. We have had a free ride in the west for years. The only way to manage it is to be more frugal in our consumption. If that means the standard of living declines a bit due to the economy growing at a slower right but the world becoming a more equal place then I reckon it aint a bad thing.

[bigcumba]

To be honest before any of us should be having to bite the bullet and pay higher fuel bills I'd suggest big companies have a look at themselves, and hey, look at the likes of Las Vegas.... probably use more power in one night than your average third world country does in a year! There are much bigger savings to be made elsewhere before joe public should be penalised... we'll end up subsidising the companies, towns, cities and countries who do not make sacrifices.

Plus let's look at the obscene profits the oil and petrol companies are making. BP and Shell made £25billion profit between them in 2007. Banks are making similar amounts - in 2007 Barclays made £7 billion, HBOS £5.7 billion, LLoyds TSB £4 billion, HSBC £12 billion, RBS £10.3 billion. So what sort of difference would half of that £62 billion make if it was ploughed back into the economy.. after all it's over £500 for every man, woman and child in this country. How much difference would it make to the NHS in building new hospitals instead of closing them down. It's nothing more than obscene greed that drives these companies to seek more and more ways of shafting us to gain these sort of profits. They may be financially rich but they are all morally bankrupt.

[tophatter]

I agree with you there but that aint going to change, unfrotunatley that particular battle was lost in the 80's.

The only solution on a personal level is for us, the people, to use less of their oil, less of their services.

Thats as big an argument to stop wasting energy or petrol then the enviromental issues. Thats why the right wingers deny their is a climate change issue. They want people to keep wasting as it goes into their pockets.

[bigcumba]

I agree with you there but that aint going to change, unfrotunatley that particular battle was lost in the 80's.

Yeah I know TH... sadly it still winds me up big time. That sort of profiteering could have been nipped in the bud years ago, but the Tories gave their buddies in big business free reign through the Thatcher years and now we can get shafted and do nowt about it.

[samantha1303]

Looking to save afew bob on the lecky....I nipped over to a certain switching site......

They reckon if I switch to BG, I can save £776 a year

I can't be reading all the waffle at the moment, so I know what Unit Rate 1 is, and Economy 7, but what is 'Unit Rate 2'? Usually 1/2 the price of Unit 1!!!

As a high consumer, is it better paying a standing charge, and gettng a cheaper Unit price?

....and what the hell is BG's 'Click Energy 5'??

Anyway, I don't think BG like me after getting the ASA to pull their ad off air

Click energy 5 is cheaper prices from British Gas but you can not ring up and ask them to set it up, you have to do it all over the pc.
So basically if you are computer literate you can save money.
It probably includes paperless billing as well so basically you log onto their site join click energy 5 giving them whatever details.
The meter may be read or estimated when the bill is due.
You log into your account whenever you like and give them the true meter reading if you missed the man, then your bill appears online so you ring up or pay it online unless you have a direct debit set up with them.
It's the cheapest option that they do.
Unit one and unit 2 is how all fuel companies except one in this country work.
For the first X amount of units you pay a higher price then after that you pay a lower price.
So if you hardly use any electric you are best off with the one company that does a standard price.
If you use around the first X amounts you need to be with the company that has the lowest rate for unit 1.
If you use loads of leccy you need to be with the company that has the lowest rate for unit 2.
I've just switched from BG to npower.
BG were useless, I rang them to ask why they had not taken their direct debit and they tried selling me insurance for my washing machine which is guaranteed for 3 years yet.
My friend works for BG and she is with someone else so that says it all really.
Try uswitch if you haven't already give them your usuage in units per whatever rather than pounds and they will give you the cheapest supplier.
The switch will take upto six weeks though and there could be problems.

[Win2Win]

I decided to move to Eon, after some extensive research they should save me between £250-£400......probably more if the wife eats the fish so I can get rid of the 2 tanks