r Am I The Only One To Read B/Gs Bills

fethiyeman

Hi All,
Why has no one picked up on this??. On the breakdown of B/Gs bills is an item called (Costs To Service Your Account) which i take to mean to produce your bill, 8% of your total bill is for this item. i:e of a £100 bill £8 pounds of it is for this service, if your bill was £300 then it becomes £24 and if it was £600 it becomes £48 and so on and so on.I asked B/G for an explanation of why the account charge rose as your bill got bigger the cost of PRODUCING the bill should not alter from one customer to the next.( Below is the reply from B/G )
Hello Mr Jebb

I have received a reply for your enquiry regarding the Cost to service your electricity account.

There is no difference in cost at a customer level for transportation of gas and electricity, it's just down to how we calculate the costs that make it look like electricity is more expensive to transport. This is because customers tend to use more gas than electricity so for every £100 a customer spends on electricity their unit rate of electricity is higher.
For every £100 a customer pays for electricity, the commodity costs represent a lower proportion of the £100 than gas, and therefore transportation is a higher proportion. At a total bill level, however, an electricity bill is lower than a gas bill. Gas transportation costs per customer are higher than electricity per customer.

Basically getting energy to a customer's home is the same whether it's gas or electricity; however gas as a commodity costs more so for every £100 on a bill the cost to transport gas will always seem lower than that for electricity.

As gas bills, for most customers, are higher though, the confusing bit is when the overall gas transportation costs are more than the electricity ones. The key here is that this is relative to how much energy a customer has used.

So transportation costs are fixed in what they are per £100 but the amount of energy used varies from household to household.

I trust that this has been of help to you regarding your electricity usage and giving me the chance to offer you this explanation.

Please can you advise me that you are happy that your query has been resolved and I can close this enquiry
If you can make any sense of the above message well............. i can't, it seems to be on about transportation costs i:e delivery to your home.I then asked if the 8% is for delivery, then what is the 19% on the bill headed ( Delivery To Your Home ) for.I then told B/G i was contacting Consumer advice ( not interested!!) The Ombudsman (Not Interested!!)National paper ( not Interested) Local Radio (Not Interested)Watch Dog ( Not Interested) But the strange thing is B/G have made an offer to put some money in my gas or electric account ( not megga amount) and today on the latest bill low and behold (Costs to service your Bill) has been changed to ( Operating Costs) what operating costs? i still think it's a backdoor way of getting more money from the customer,i might add this 8% for gas jumps up to 13% !!! for B/Gs Electric bills.
Fethiyeman

stewie_griffin

I thought I knew the energy industry pretty much inside out but I've got abolutely no idea what the email you received from BG is on about. Is this a new thing that has only recently started to appear on their bills?

Cardew

stewie_griffin wrote: »

I thought I knew the energy industry pretty much inside out but I've got abolutely no idea what the email you received from BG is on about. Is this a new thing that has only recently started to appear on their bills?

It is simply a breakdown of the costs involved in supplying gas and electricity.

On paper bill - but not my on-line bill - is the following:

The cost of your gas isn't just the price of fuel**

44% wholesale gas
20% taxes
19% delivery to your home
8% operating costs
5% VAT
2% government obligation to help the environment
2% profit

** The above example based on the industry average consumption of 20,500kWh per year based on average regional prices. Costs are indicative as at February 2009.

For electricity the figures are 53% wholesale, 24% delivery, 13% operating costs, 5% Vat, 3% environment, 2% profit.

His assumption that the 8% or 13% operating costs is just to produce your bill can not be correct.

To be quite honest I am not certain of the point the OP is making, as the ** postscript explains that the breakdown is for an average bill. I can understand his point that those with high consumption are subsidising those with low consumption - for the cost to operate account; but what solution is he suggesting?


Is he suggesting that the 13% for electricity should be a flat charge to each customer! i.e. if the average UK bill was £500 that £65(13% of £500) should be charged to all customers regardless if they used 1,000kWh a year or 10,000kWh a year?

Or is he suggesting that the kWh price should be(even*) higher for low users and decrease as you use more?

* Bear in mind that with the Tier1/Tier2 structure, low users do pay more for each kWh.

Cardew

Just to add that if the Tier1 price is 20p/kWh for the first 500kWh pa and then 10p/kwh for Tier2:

Someone using 1,000kWh pa will be paying 15P/kWh and someone using 10,000kWh pa will be paying 10.5p/kWh

stewie_griffin

Cardew wrote: »

It is simply a breakdown of the costs involved in supplying gas and electricity.

On paper bill - but not my on-line bill - is the following:



For electricity the figures are 53% wholesale, 24% delivery, 13% operating costs, 5% Vat, 3% environment, 2% profit.

His assumption that the 8% or 13% operating costs is just to produce your bill can not be correct.

To be quite honest I am not certain of the point the OP is making, as the ** postscript explains that the breakdown is for an average bill. I can understand his point that those with high consumption are subsidising those with low consumption - for the cost to operate account; but what solution is he suggesting?


Is he suggesting that the 13% for electricity should be a flat charge to each customer! i.e. if the average UK bill was £500 that £65(13% of £500) should be charged to all customers regardless if they used 1,000kWh a year or 10,000kWh a year?

Or is he suggesting that the kWh price should be(even*) higher for low users and decrease as you use more?

* Bear in mind that with the Tier1/Tier2 structure, low users do pay more for each kWh.

This makes a lot more sense now cheers Cardew. I think if I'd seen the BG bill I would have understood it I was more confused by the email from BG trying to explain it and also how the OP worded it.

stewie_griffin

On a different note I wonder if this is something all suppliers will be putting on their bills? I take it you're a BG customer Cardew is this something they have been putting on their bills for a while. I guessing it's a way of justifying not putting prices down more as they are showing that only just over 50% is down to wholesale prices

kippen_noedel

Cardew wrote: »

I can understand his point that those with high consumption are subsidising those with low consumption - for the cost to operate account; but what solution is he suggesting?

It's not that way round at all, as with income tax and most other taxes the lower your income the higher the % of your expenditure gets eaten up.

As a high rate tax payer I shouldn't get more of my income pro rata as disposable income than a low rate payer but I do.

Similarly as a high user of energy I shouldn't get to pay less for my energy use than a low user on pro rata basis they should be the same or least I should be paying more..

Slight hypochrisy from me there because I left the country in the 70s to avoid paying 72% tax ((highest rate was 93%) & I would do the same again if it came to it. Again low income folk don't have that choice, the government, taxes them to oblivion. Actually Labour are worse for them than Conservatives (Go Figure) for that now and historically, always amused me that the "working man" wants a Labour Govt.

Tariffs should be turned on their heads, high users should pay more but they don't.

Cardew

kippen_noedel wrote: »

It's not that way round at all, as with income tax and most other taxes the lower your income the higher the % of your expenditure gets eaten up.

As a high rate tax payer I shouldn't get more of my income pro rata as disposable income than a low rate payer but I do.

Similarly as a high user of energy I shouldn't get to pay less for my energy use than a low user on pro rata basis they should be the same or least I should be paying more..

Slight hypochrisy from me there because I left the country in the 70s to avoid paying 72% tax ((highest rate was 93%) & I would do the same again if it came to it. Again low income folk don't have that choice, the government, taxes them to oblivion. Actually Labour are worse for them than Conservatives (Go Figure) for that now and historically, always amused me that the "working man" wants a Labour Govt.

Tariffs should be turned on their heads, high users should pay more but they don't.

You have taken that quote of mine out of context, I was making the point overall that that those with low consumption do pay an effectively higher rate for their energy because of the tier system. That quote was with reference to the 8%/13% costs to operate account - which was the point the OP was making.

I have a place in the USA and there they do exactly as you suggest with electricity prices. The first 1,000kWh per month(no gas) are at the lower rate and for any consumption above that the price is 20% higher.

Cardew

stewie_griffin wrote: »

On a different note I wonder if this is something all suppliers will be putting on their bills? I take it you're a BG customer Cardew is this something they have been putting on their bills for a while. I guessing it's a way of justifying not putting prices down more as they are showing that only just over 50% is down to wholesale prices

Yes I am a BG customer(on the fixed to April 2010 tariff).

For some years I have had paperless billing. However BG's 'wonderful' new computer seemed unable to cope with the fact that I have 4 accounts at this address(2 for an annex).

To overcome this "as a temporary measure" I was sent paper bills. The computer is now coping - albeit 3 accounts are shown for one address and 1 for the annex!! - and I get paperless bills for all 4 accounts.

However BG cannot seem to stop sending me paper bills as well(they have tried). The paperless and paper bills all suggest I should elect for paperless bills!!!

So to answer your question, the last 2 paper bils(Apr & Jul) all have that breakdown of costs - the paperless bills do not.

fethiyeman

Hi All,
Thanks for the response, the last part of Stewie-Griffen's message "I was more confused by the email from BG trying to explain it and also how the OP worded it. I did not word the e-mail, it was a straight copy & paste from B/G's e-mail with just the name of the person who sent it not included. Who's OP by the way???.
Fethiyeman

Cardew

fethiyeman wrote: »

Hi All,
Thanks for the response, the last part of Stewie-Griffen's message "I was more confused by the email from BG trying to explain it and also how the OP worded it. I did not word the e-mail, it was a straight copy & paste from B/G's e-mail with just the name of the person who sent it not included. Who's OP by the way???.
Fethiyeman

OP = Original Poster i.e. yourself in this thread.

Whilst the BG email is incomprehensible, it is not clear (to myself) what was the substance of your complaint to BG?

What do you want to happen?