Gas & Electricity - Price Rise

My direct debit was £120 a month for Gas and Electricity. Just checked my bill for the first month since the price rise and despite using a fair bit less than last year for the same time period, my bill has just doubled. Direct Debit up to £240 a month. Two adults, one child....

Can't wait for another price rise in Autumn and winter weather.

 

Your direct debit might not be what you have used. A lot of companies are trying it on and putting them up by more than necessary, basically using customers' funds as their own overdraft. Probably worth challenging them on it.

 

£300 a month for me now. Scandalous.

 

I'm surprised some smug Tory hasn't advised us to keep warm by sharing a candle yet!!!

 

Yep mine is a shocker.

I can’t see how the government can sit back and let the October hikes happen. I can only assume they have a strategy to ‘help people’ and then call a general election in close proximity. Inflation will generate increased revenues and so they must be building up a chest of cash.

I’m in a v fortunate position of being able to cope with an increase of 2/300 a month but I appreciate that many people are not. Some of those less fortunate are, if nothing is done, quite literally going to freeze to death / choose eating over heating come next winter. It’s a disgrace.

 

Some ****** MP was on five live this morning intimating that people have the opportunity to claim loads of benefits from the councils which they are not doing. They were essentially abdicating responsibility by saying that they’ve done all they can by giving the councils a load of money and it’s the peoples fault for not being aware of those benefits. You couldn’t make it up.

 

You only need to look at the reports, surveys and studies that have been put out the last few days to see the impact already being felt. The current increases haven't really bitten yet either. Inflation is going to get worse, it will feed into borrowing. There will very likely be a recession, there will likely be increases to unemployment and there will very likely be a huge uplift in energy prices in October. If nothing significant is done ahead of that, I can't even imagine the pain that will cause a very significant number of people.

 

I’m naively hoping that the companies are charging so much on direct debit now to create a sort of forced savings plan for people as a buffer for winter. E.g. charging £200 now so that there’s enough credit build up that they don’t need to put direct debits up in winter as the excess summer money will cover it. (So if they think the total bill will be £2400 for the year they’re charging £200 each month rather than £100 now and £300 in winter).

 

Hi guys
Don't be fooled by these con merchants,whatever your previous direct debit was add 54%.That should roughly equate to what your new direct debit should be.I' m with eon next and online you can choose what you want to pay !

 

That would require someone with some kind of conscious with ability to try and do best for their customers.

It doesn't exist.

They don't give a ****

 

In fairness it’s in their interest not to have bad debt so would be a decent idea as long as people didn’t leave off the back of it !

 

Ours went from £70 to £116 as managed to get on a fixed rate for a year that was only available for a day. Electric only as heating is oil. We were pretty much using £70 a month prior to the price increase, so we tried being really tight with it last month, see what we could do. Just stuff like filling the kettle with only what u need, didn't use dishwasher, did it by hand, washing machine on one day a week, turn lights off, nothing revolutionary, just focussed on it a bit. Used £60 last month at a higher rate, so less than before the rise. Just shows we'd been wasteful, but, yes, I think the energy companies are building in a buffer, if I get 3 months in and it's still well under, I'll be reducing my DD to Eon.

 

yes, my monthly costs I calculate has gone from £224.92 a month in Jan-Feb to £244.51 a month in Mar-Apr that is despite using 1,100 less Kw of energy (1/3rd less) across Gas and electricity between the 2 months. I introduced some stringent changes in Feb-Mar which saw consumption there drop by nearly 1000Kw from Jan-Feb - I would recommend people drop the thermostat by 2 degrees on the heating AND hot water temperature, and also cut 2 hours a day from the time the heating is on if you can and switch off all electric devices and don't have anything on standby that doesn't need to be. All sounds a bit depressing but that 1000kw of energy is £80 a month with the new tariff.

 

one bedroom oap bungalow, just me, gone up from £45 to £96.21 pm duel fuel with eon

 

While we’re on this I did my car insurance yesterday. Decided get a few quotes and got two that almost halved it. Went back to the original insurer and told them. They took a few minutes ‘looking into what they could do’ and undercut the quote I’d got from someone else by 20%. Went with that. For the rest of the day, I was hounded by the other two insurers almost begging me to switch to them.

Insurance companies are now desperate to hold onto customers, almost at any cost.

 

When you pay by DD that is what happens. Instead of paying £200 per month in winter and £100 in summer, you pay £150 all year round to spread the cost. (Made up figures but you get the idea).

 

Just so you know, washing by hand uses more energy and water than a dishwasher. Using a dishwasher is always listed in advice on how to cut bills.

 

Especially if you put it on overnight. It also uses way less water than washing up in the sink.

 

Overnight only matters if you have a on/off peak tariff.

 

I didn't realise there were tariffs that weren't on/off to be honest.