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Do you use heating fuel to warm your home? Your chance to complain to Consumer Focus
Former_MSE_Archna
Posts: 1,903 Forumite
What's this about?
Watchdog, Consumer Focus has launched an investigation into the heating fuel market. It wants to find out about your experiences, problems and issues when heating your home in this way. It will then develop proposals to help consumers get a better deal in the future.
If you use heating fuel to heat your home it can be incredibly difficult to find a cheap suuplier and switch to it. There's no official regulator making it very difficult to know who to direct complaints to and get any action taken.
How to complain
Email [URL="mailto:regulated.industries@consumerfocus.org.uk"]Consumer Focus[/URL] by Friday 31 July outlining your experiences.
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Watchdog, Consumer Focus has launched an investigation into the heating fuel market. It wants to find out about your experiences, problems and issues when heating your home in this way. It will then develop proposals to help consumers get a better deal in the future.
If you use heating fuel to heat your home it can be incredibly difficult to find a cheap suuplier and switch to it. There's no official regulator making it very difficult to know who to direct complaints to and get any action taken.
How to complain
Email [URL="mailto:regulated.industries@consumerfocus.org.uk"]Consumer Focus[/URL] by Friday 31 July outlining your experiences.
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Comments
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We use oil for heating, and have done for 15 years now. Every time we get a delivery we can phone around for quotes, or use an internet comparison site like boilerjuice. So it's easy to change oil supplier. Yes, prices were high last year (like gas, electricity etc), but they have now come down and oil is much cheaper now. :T
Not so easy to switch supplier if you have the misfortune to be on LPG though. For a start the supplier owns the tank, so if you want to change, they have to come and take your tank away, and the new supplier delivers you a new tank. Go figure. So many friends we have went for LPG because they moved out to the country from towns and cities, and thought it would be like mains gas. Unfortunately they didn't realise it would be twice the price, and now they are stuck with it too.0 -
Can you just clarify exactly what you mean by heating fuel? (the Consumer Focus link is down). This 'incredibly difficult' bit you're referring to must be something I'm not familiar with such as LPG. I use oil like barnchester; phone for quotes, pay over the phone, delivery the next day, no problem.0
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We moved into a rural area (South Somerset) with no mains gas. The property we bought had a Calorgas LPG tank. Calor tried every way they could to sign us up to a new contract but I shopped around as being new owners, Calor had to remove their tank for free if we requested them to.
I got quotes from Calor, BP, Shell and Flogas. They were all within a penny per litre of each other.
I then found Countrywide Farmers in Yellow pages. They are a co-operative in the South West who buy large quantities of oil and LPG and will supply non farmers as well.
To cut the story short - 25% cheaper for LPG, lower rent on the tank and a 1 year contract not 2 like Calor. They arranged a new tank, swapped them over and transferred the fuel and gave us £100 of free LPG for the inconvenience. :j
Worth trying if they cover your area, very helpful people. :T0 -
I moved house from heating oil to LPG last November.
No problems with heating oil, only with the toe rags who drained the tank just before moving in and just after moving out - and of course the police weren't interested as no CCTV cameras in country lanes (yet!) to make life easy for them.
For LPG, I found no real difference between costs of supplier, and all locking you in to a 2 year contract. However I think the fuel price may be less volatile than oil, but too early to say for sure.
Tim0 -
We too use heating oil - it was awful last year when the prices were so high, thankfully prices have come down a little but I'm worried that they are rising and it's only July! I have used boilerjuice.com and always ring round for prices too. Just thought I'd share my thoughts!:j0
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Lincolnshire
I believe the rules on LPG have changed IE from February you can only have a 2 year contract and if you change suppliers the new suppliers buys the tank of the old supplier for £800 minus depreciation. This was supposed to be enforced from February But i never checked if it was actually brought in.
I live In Lincolnshire near Louth and there only appears to be 2 suppliers. I did get them to compete on price and got them down a bit (September 2007) to about 20p but it is now 40p a litre and has not come down at all although to be fair it was much slower than oil going up. But as the oil market price is rising again I doubt that we will see any drop in price.
Doesn't anyone know of another supplier in this area other than flogas and Calor. Also what are other people paying for there gas per litre???? And what is the cost of your tank rental? mine is 16.4p a day + VAT at 5% (17.22p)
As LPG is rural thing may I suggest to people that they think about a wood burner NOT as a replacement for LPG but something to run in conjunction. If the fireplace has nothing in it put a wood burner in it. Mine does not run the central heating it just heats the sitting room but I leave the doors open (2 bed bungalow) and it keeps the rest the house warm enough for me with the central heating switched on occasionally. Note this cost me £2000 £700 for stove (can pay as little as £500 for an equally good stove) £1000 for fitting (proper Hetas registered fitter) and chainsaws etc brought it up to about £2000. Of course the cost of wood is all important, for me it is virtually nothing AND no I wont tell you where I get it from.
One last thing you may find useful a litre of oil gives you 10.3 kilowatts and a litre of LPG is equal to 7.1 kilowatts and if you want to compare natural gas its 10.9 kilowatts per m3. JB0 -
FOR THOSE WANTING A FORUM FOR LPG THERE IS A FORUM ON THIS SITE i.e. Bulk LPG - Cheapest suppliers / supply route?
ALSO I JUST FOUND A NEW SUPPLIER IN MY AREA AND THEY ALSO SUPPLY
Yorkshire
Humberside
Nottinghamshire
Lincolnshire
They are obviously after new customers and are well worth a look.
There phone number is 01302 328100 and they are called discount gas supplies. You may find it diffcult on the internet to find them (i cannot give the link as I am newbie) becouse of the name but if you remove the spaces and add .co and .uk you should get them. They offer a phone quote so no harm in trying them. JB0 -
Read this in the local newspaper the other day...
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1301719?UserKey=“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.” - Oscar Wilde0
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