Ebico prices to rise on 2 October

Premier_2

dc wrote: »

What I dont understand is that earlier they/Ebico "pegged their price rises to SSE rises" yet SSE prices went up on 25th AUG and my bill showed price increase from 2/10 as stated in earlier posts, so I'm not complaining.

Re BG Click tariffs, so far they seem to have got ther act together for the moment. Those on Click 5 should change to Click 6 as they are getting seen off.

(PS I use Ebico for low useage reasons and BG Click elsewhere on price for high useage)

I too was puzzled by that announcement made August 2007, a copy of which can be found here:
http://www.ebico.co.uk/html/x_archive.php

Reading it again, I think what they were suggesting is they had traditionally tried to keep their prices stable, but other suppliers were moving their prices up & down. Ebico have never lowered their price, but they haven't increased it as often as other had either.

I think what they were suggesting by benchmarking is that as SSE changed their price, ebico would from now on re-evaluate their prices. The price changes may not happen on the exact same day nor vary by the exact same amounts, but that they would re-evaluate their prices whenever SSE changed theirs.

Premier_2

Nicholas wrote: »

Of course I noticed. All I'm saying is that the first letter I got was from Ebico - before my details were passed to Southern. I would have thought I would have a final letter from Ebico, as it is Ebico I am leaving. Unless......Ebico is just another glorified tariff with Southern

The Ebico website used to say they are trying to get it sorted. Now it just admits it's a quirk. Perhaps they have given up trying to sort it out. I'm just a little disappointed that they did not try harder. After all, it is the DD customers they need to attract to subsidise the service for the prepayment customers.

Well if they were part of SSE, they probably could have changed the computer software. But they are not.

As they are a seperate company that just use SSE for their customer support & billing, then they are stuck with what they've got. SSE have no interest in changing their own software as it was probably designed to meet their needs, not that of a third party competitor. Even if they did allow a re-write, they would probably expect ebico to foot the bill. Why would SSE's shareholders expect to fund a change required by a competitor?

I doubt ebico have the funds to fund such a change, even if SSE would allow it. Even if they did have the funds, I doubt they would see such enormous investment as a valuable use of their income - better to supply customers with cheap energy than pay software developers to re-write a competitors billing system software.

Nicholas

Premier wrote: »

Well if they were part of SSE, they probably could have changed the computer software. But they are not.

As they are a seperate company that just use SSE for their customer support & billing, then they are stuck with what they've got. SSE have no interest in changing their own software as it was probably designed to meet their needs, not that of a third party competitor. Even if they did allow a re-write, they would probably expect ebico to foot the bill. Why would SSE's shareholders expect to fund a change required by a competitor?

I doubt ebico have the funds to fund such a change, even if SSE would allow it. Even if they did have the funds, I doubt they would see such enormous investment as a valuable use of their income - better to supply customers with cheap energy than pay software developers to re-write a competitors billing system software.

And for these reasons........I'm out;)

Gavioli_UK

Premier wrote: »

I'm not sure who established what, where or when.

What I can confirm is that Ebico is an independent limited company listed as such at companies house, with their own management board. I remember someone got their accounts from companies house to discover the total they pay their directors; result is that their are no fat cats at ebico.

Ebico work in partnership with Scottish and Southern Energy (S&SE) as their licensed supplier, but they are not owned by SSE. Equigas & Equipower are both brands of Ebico, not SSE.

Therefore I think I am entirely correct in stating that "Your letters from Southern would have been issued on behalf of ebico"

Perhaps this quote from ebico's website will clarify matters further:

http://www.ebico.co.uk/html/a_partners.php


Edit: but then you know all this don't you? I remember you were posting negative comments in any ebico thread you could find last April about how you had a problem when they supplied you and you wanted to speak to someone at Ebico rather than someone at SSE as you claimed your issue not something the SSE customer service could help you with.
A typical thread can be found here:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=863093

I don't think you ever did explain what issue you thought you had that couldn't be resolved by the customer service team at SSE, but you were clear they are a different company.

I will explain my issue for those interested

I applied to change my electricity supply to Ebico as I wanted to test them out. I do some work at an advice centre in a deprived area of a midlands city and was hoping to recommend them to the advisors if I was satisfied. I was surprised that Ebico was not on the list of suppliers offered by the advice centre to those with problems paying for fuel, many on prepayment meters

Ebico transfered both my electricity and gas. I definately did not want my gas transfering as I was 1 month away from an annual rebate. Customer service at SSE asked me to get Ebico to confirm the error. Over several days, calls to Ebico's number went straight to an answer machine, and I left many messages for them to ring me back. No call was ever received. It took several e-mails to get confrmation that Ebico had contacted SSE and established my original supplier, and my rebate would be paid.

I never received a welcome pack for the electricity supply. This failure has been reported by others on this forum. Others have also reported that it is hard to contact Ebico by telephone when trying to find out the status of their transfer. I do feel that a company that promotes its ethical values should be contactable by its customers on telephone numbers quoted on its website to a reasonable standard. Contacting Ebico by telephone proved impossible.

I have subsequently found out that if you transfer to Ebico from a SSE company or vice versa you do not go through a change of supplier process. It is just a tarrif change. I agree that Ebico is a stand alone company.

I like Ebico's simple billing and tarrif structure, and I have suggested the advice centre adds them to the list of suppliers. (They are not on yet, as the advice centre uses a list from the city council, but they are working on this). From the postings on this and other sites the vast majority of customers do not seem to have a problem with Ebico, so maybe my problem was just a one off.

Unfortuneately Ebico's recent increase has been steeper than other suppliers, so I am now looking elswhere.

1carminestocky

Premier wrote: »

Well if they were part of SSE, they probably could have changed the computer software. But they are not.

As they are a seperate company that just use SSE for their customer support & billing, then they are stuck with what they've got. SSE have no interest in changing their own software as it was probably designed to meet their needs, not that of a third party competitor. Even if they did allow a re-write, they would probably expect ebico to foot the bill. Why would SSE's shareholders expect to fund a change required by a competitor?

I doubt ebico have the funds to fund such a change, even if SSE would allow it. Even if they did have the funds, I doubt they would see such enormous investment as a valuable use of their income - better to supply customers with cheap energy than pay software developers to re-write a competitors billing system software.[/quote]


It's not *really* cheap any more, though, is it?

KimYeovil

(Agreeing with Carmine, now. Shudder.)

Ebico is not about cheap power. It is about equal pricing. (Not cheapness, not fairness.)

A fair tariff would be one where a daily standing charge is charged equally to everyone regardless of consumption and then everyone pays the same price for every unit. This would stop the INequity of low consumers having their fixed costs subsidised. (There may be some benefits granted to low users, particularly with electricity to reflect the lower costs they cause through lowering peak supply demands. But this is not likely to be more than their higher standing costs.)

It is inevitable that Ebico will trend towards being a little costlier. It is inevitable that it will trend to competitiors' tier 1 prices, not their tier 2 prices. And I have never seen how it can survive in the long term. Of course, having a 66% reduction in bills for low users was nice while it lasted. I don't think anyone thought it would be sustainable. Profits and shareholders do not grab 66% of the income of the private big 6.

1carminestocky

KimYeovil wrote: »

(Agreeing with Carmine, now. Shudder.)

Ebico is not about cheap power. It is about equal pricing. (Not cheapness, not fairness.)

A fair tariff would be one where a daily standing charge is charged equally to everyone regardless of consumption and then everyone pays the same price for every unit. This would stop the INequity of low consumers having their fixed costs subsidised. (There may be some benefits granted to low users, particularly with electricity to reflect the lower costs they cause through lowering peak supply demands. But this is not likely to be more than their higher standing costs.)

It is inevitable that Ebico will trend towards being a little costlier. It is inevitable that it will trend to competitiors' tier 1 prices, not their tier 2 prices. And I have never seen how it can survive in the long term. Of course, having a 66% reduction in bills for low users was nice while it lasted. I don't think anyone thought it would be sustainable. Profits and shareholders do not grab 66% of the income of the private big 6.

I feel exactly the same way. I'll check over my original post, there must be something silly and ridiculous and downright weird in it for you to agree with it.

Ken68

Standing charges, surely, are just one part of the costings, no need to highlight it.
Bung it all into one,add on a profit figure, that is the price the customers pays.
I doubt if standing charges are the same with every supplier anyway. VAT has to be seperate for those that can reclaim it.

Premier_2

KimYeovil wrote:

...A fair tariff would be one where a daily standing charge is charged equally to everyone regardless of consumption and then everyone pays the same price for every unit...

Why do you think it's fair that everyone pays the same standing charge?

Surely it is fairer that everyone pays the same unit price, no matter how much they use. I think standing charges are one of the most unfair systems ever. How is it fair that a customer is lumped with perhaps a standing charge of £30-£40 per quarter even though they may have used no power at all? What is the incentive for them to save energy? How can they save money?

Standing charges used to be the norm for all energy supply contracts, but it is interesting to note that I think all the supply companies now offer no standing charge tariffs. Why would customers choose option of non-standing charge if it was unfair?

1carminestocky

I absolutely agree, Premier (and I'm a fairly high user). I'm all for a flat rate charged per unit used. I was once old by a BG employee that standing charges/Tier 1 tariffs are 'to cover maintenance costs and so it's only fair that everybody pays the same'. As this was a BG employee I've no idea if he was telling the truth or not, lol, but even if he was, to me, the more fuel you use the more maintenance contribution you should pay...