British Gas Price Freeze

jem16 wrote:

Just read an article warning customers to avoid the BG price freeze.

Consumer warning against fixed BG bills

Jem16
Makes interesting reading.Oh I had thought your first quote was for £1291.

jem16 wrote:

Yes it was but I had put in my usage figures for last year based on being on the BG Freeze till 2010 prices.

The second quote of £1137 is based on the tariff I'm currently on with the updated (as of 19th Sept) BG prices.

This is where I find it confusing. My figures are based upon actual kwh used in the last year. However my direct debits set by BG would come to £1236 over the year.

Jem16
Contact Bg to reduce your dd and credit you with any credit

mandi_moles wrote:

Well this is a bit worrying !!

I capped both my gas & electric with BG ages ago and just to check, i phoned them today to check and also asked if that means im protected from this big increase coming up. I was told that my bills WONT go up because they are capped.

Is this wrong then ? Please dont make me use that o870 number again for 20 mins lol

Mandy, if you are on a capped price tarriff already, then you will not feel the effects of this price increase. If both your gas and electricity are capped then you must be on capped price 2007, and I wouldn't even think about changing to PP2010.

Wait until 2007, see what's going on, I have already been questioning at work whether we should be pushing PP2010 to customers, rather than letting them decide for themselves.

If I were in the position of choosing, then I wouldn't go near PP2010.

For those who aren't on any price protection at the moment, then your gas prices (if you choose PP2010) will go up by a total of 17.4% (that's the 14.2% price increase, then the 2.8% premium). For electricity, then this will increase by a total of 8.7% (that's the 14.2% price increase, minus the 4.8% discount for PP2010).

For electricity only customers, I would say go for it. The surplus gas, which should start to take effect in 2007/08 wont effect electricity supplies until aroun 2009/10.

But for gas customers, particularly gas only customers, get your gas bills out, look at what you have used over the last 12 months in terms of kilowatt hours (kWh's) and get on to the comparison sites.

But dont just take their word for it. I have used those sites and been blatently lied to, simply because Powergen and nPower were paying the most commission. (NOTE - that is why British Gas never comes anywhere near the top of the lists on these comparison sites, it doesn't pay commission to them. It's too greedy!)

So once they tell you who can save you the most, get to that companies site and see if it's true. Work out what your bills would have been had they been produced by that other company.

If anyone needs a hand doing this, PM me, and I will see what I can do.

JC

Oh PS, none of the British Gas numbers are 0870, they are all 0845. For best results, call the house.co.uk customer services number 0845 600 5122, early mornings, before around 10am. Dont call after 9.30 on a weekday as the billing systems go offline around this time. Same on a Saturday, tho it is 6pm and it's really just hit or miss on a Sunday.

If all else fails, visit the site and click on the contact us button, or email the general email address which is house@house.co.uk. Tho I will warn you now, we are behind on work at the moment so expect a reply in 2-3 days rather than the 24 hours aimed for.

JC

Sorry, a PPS. For those of you thinking about changing, but fear it is too much of a ball ache, don't worry. As long as you are prepared to go in with your eyes wide open then things should be fine.

Once you have take steps to decide on your new supplier, before you apply, make sure you have your supply numbers.

I can't stress this enough. This is where the vast majority of erroneous transfers (incorrect supply changes) comes from. If a customer doesn't have their supply numbers, then we have to contact the gas and electricity distributors to get them, and it all just goes to pot.

So, get out your gas and electricity bills and look for them on their.

Your gas supply number is your MPR - Meter Point Reference number. It is 10 digits long.

Your electricity supply number is your S Number (also referred to as an MPAN - Meter Point Administration Number). On your electricity bill it should be in a series of boxes and have a large S at the beginning. The part you need is the 13 digits across the bottom boxes.

When you contact your new supplier, make sure they take these from you. If they do, then all should go swimmingly.

Make sure that you take a reading from each meter on the day you are transfering to the new supplier and call them with it.

Take a note of the date, time and the name of the person you spoke with, so that if there is any problem with it, you have a record of who you spoke with.

I would also recommend contacting the supplier you are leaving and giving them the reading. What harm can it do? Just ask them to enter it as an information reading. No need to produce a bill to it, that will happen anyway.

But if, for some strange reason, the new supplier loses the reading you gave them and need to apply for an estimated change read, your old supplier will have that one and the change can still go ahead without and problems on the readings.

Once that is done, all that is left to be done is make sure your new supplier sets up what every payment method you have chosen and that your old supplier has closed your account and stopped taking any Direct Debit payments you may have set up with them (this will usually happen if the new suppleir hasn't sent the change over reads on the electronic transfer system, so the old supplier hasn't been told where to close the account down to, so the account continues on, ad infinitum, with DD payms being taken until someone notices, usually the poor old customer).

All in all, it should take 4-8 weeks, from start to finish.

Hope this has helped.

If anyone has any energy suppleir related questions, or any questions regarding bills (tho not energy efficiency, not my specialist subject I'm afraid), feel free to PM me, or post a question on here.

JC

jem16 wrote:

The main thing it told me was this;
“Fixing prices until 2010 may seem like a good idea now, but with experts predicting a downward turn in prices by 2007, customers may end up being locked into an artificially high tariff,” he warned."

I decided I didn't want locked into a tariff which could be higher than is necessary and with no way of getting out without a penalty.

I have now signed up to the Scottish Power online capped tariff and hope their service is better and bills are clearer. This was after BG did not give me my discounts for paperless billing even though I had registered. After an email to chase them up, I was then credited with my £10 and apparently re-registered. I'm told my dual fuel discount is applied to each quarterly electricity bill but I can't see any sign of it - any idea how it's shown?

The last straw came when I emailed them last Saturday asking them to confirm exactly what tariff I am on and what their website means by "apply for discounted electricity". I am still waiting for a reply!

A good choice all in all IMO. The Scottish Power online service is fantastic and I would say that, in terms of the billing aspects of the site, it will be rivaling house.co.uk at the next round of Blays Net ratings.

They have recently revamped the site and made it a lot more user friendly. As before, when you enter your readings, the site will calculate your bills, and display your opening balance plus your usage minus your payments and then the final balance.

If you then confirm the bill, it will be produced properly online, within 3 working days. Once it is online, it is a full scanned version of a paper bill.

It has exactly the same style calculations as the British Gas bill, tho the exact calculations depend on whether you have gone for the standing charge or no standing charge option (tho in real terms there is no difference in the amount of the bills you pay on either standing charge or no standing charge with Scottish Power, the bills work out exactly the same).

You can then download or print the bills from the Scottish Power site and they look exactly as they would had they been sent by post (depending on your printer quality of course).

In terms of Customer Service, I cant comment on my account I'm afraid as I have never had cause to contact them. Everything has worked absolutely fine in the last two years.

My sister did have a couple of problems with them when she first switched, but that was something to do with a meter exchange, and all in all it was sorted rather quickly.

The paperless billing discount. I couldn't comment on that without actually seeing your account. It is supposed to be an automated process that applies the credit to your account. Tho it can happen anytime from a month before to a month after the anniversary of your registration to paperless billing.

The Dual FUel Discount is creditted to your electricity bills each quarter. However, because a problem with the communication between the billing system and the online system, it will show online as Standing Charge, but then appears a as a credit. This has been amended on the billing system, but because the new all singing all dancing British Gas billing system is currently being rolled out across all 19m customers, the problem hasn't been amended online, because it will fix itself in the coming months.

The 'apply for discounted electricity' is an offer to sign up to a tracker style rate for your electricity account. Basically, the electricity rate will be set at somewhere between 6-10% below the rate of your local electricity supplier (the local one, not necessarily the cheapest, in fact they are usually the most expensive) until 2007. If their rate goes up, yours goes up, if their's goes down, so does yours. To be honest, it's not all that.

I know house.co.uk are behind on their work at the moment, but I thought it was around 2-3 days they were behind, not as far as 5 days! You should get a reply very soon. But hopefully I have answered most of your questions.

JC

tough_ref wrote:

Mandy, if you are on a capped price tarriff already, then you will not feel the effects of this price increase. If both your gas and electricity are capped then you must be on capped price 2007, and I wouldn't even think about changing to PP2010.

Wait until 2007, see what's going on, I have already been questioning at work whether we should be pushing PP2010 to customers, rather than letting them decide for themselves.

If I were in the position of choosing, then I wouldn't go near PP2010.

For those who aren't on any price protection at the moment, then your gas prices (if you choose PP2010) will go up by a total of 17.4% (that's the 14.2% price increase, then the 2.8% premium). For electricity, then this will increase by a total of 8.7% (that's the 14.2% price increase, minus the 4.8% discount for PP2010).

For electricity only customers, I would say go for it. The surplus gas, which should start to take effect in 2007/08 wont effect electricity supplies until aroun 2009/10.

But for gas customers, particularly gas only customers, get your gas bills out, look at what you have used over the last 12 months in terms of kilowatt hours (kWh's) and get on to the comparison sites.

But dont just take their word for it. I have used those sites and been blatently lied to, simply because Powergen and nPower were paying the most commission. (NOTE - that is why British Gas never comes anywhere near the top of the lists on these comparison sites, it doesn't pay commission to them. It's too greedy!)

So once they tell you who can save you the most, get to that companies site and see if it's true. Work out what your bills would have been had they been produced by that other company.

If anyone needs a hand doing this, PM me, and I will see what I can do.

JC

Oh PS, none of the British Gas numbers are 0870, they are all 0845. For best results, call the house.co.uk customer services number 0845 600 5122, early mornings, before around 10am. Dont call after 9.30 on a weekday as the billing systems go offline around this time. Same on a Saturday, tho it is 6pm and it's really just hit or miss on a Sunday.

If all else fails, visit the site and click on the contact us button, or email the general email address which is [email="house@house.co.uk"]house@house.co.uk[/email]. Tho I will warn you now, we are behind on work at the moment so expect a reply in 2-3 days rather than the 24 hours aimed for.

JC

Sorry, a PPS. For those of you thinking about changing, but fear it is too much of a ball ache, don't worry. As long as you are prepared to go in with your eyes wide open then things should be fine.

Once you have take steps to decide on your new supplier, before you apply, make sure you have your supply numbers.

I can't stress this enough. This is where the vast majority of erroneous transfers (incorrect supply changes) comes from. If a customer doesn't have their supply numbers, then we have to contact the gas and electricity distributors to get them, and it all just goes to pot.

So, get out your gas and electricity bills and look for them on their.

Your gas supply number is your MPR - Meter Point Reference number. It is 10 digits long.

Your electricity supply number is your S Number (also referred to as an MPAN - Meter Point Administration Number). On your electricity bill it should be in a series of boxes and have a large S at the beginning. The part you need is the 13 digits across the bottom boxes.

When you contact your new supplier, make sure they take these from you. If they do, then all should go swimmingly.

Make sure that you take a reading from each meter on the day you are transfering to the new supplier and call them with it.

Take a note of the date, time and the name of the person you spoke with, so that if there is any problem with it, you have a record of who you spoke with.

I would also recommend contacting the supplier you are leaving and giving them the reading. What harm can it do? Just ask them to enter it as an information reading. No need to produce a bill to it, that will happen anyway.

But if, for some strange reason, the new supplier loses the reading you gave them and need to apply for an estimated change read, your old supplier will have that one and the change can still go ahead without and problems on the readings.

Once that is done, all that is left to be done is make sure your new supplier sets up what every payment method you have chosen and that your old supplier has closed your account and stopped taking any Direct Debit payments you may have set up with them (this will usually happen if the new suppleir hasn't sent the change over reads on the electronic transfer system, so the old supplier hasn't been told where to close the account down to, so the account continues on, ad infinitum, with DD payms being taken until someone notices, usually the poor old customer).

All in all, it should take 4-8 weeks, from start to finish.

Hope this has helped.

If anyone has any energy suppleir related questions, or any questions regarding bills (tho not energy efficiency, not my specialist subject I'm afraid), feel free to PM me, or post a question on here.

JC

tough_ref
Welcome onboard.About those phone numbers.Maybe this might help some...
www.saynoto0870.com also check the unverified section.There are quite a few different numbers shown for Bg that maybe of assistance.
As for Scottish Power well done for choosing a decent tariff.Mine goes until June 2006.Are you going to get the £36 bonus?
Remember to dial 08000270055 (internet enq. section)if you need to speak to them.Don't use the 0845 number shown on their bills-unless you want to pay.