CarH

CarH_2

Although British Gas are raising their prices you might be interested in the following. My 96 yr old mother in law was worried about the increases. Established that she is on the Standard Tariff with British Gas and the bill is paid direct from her bank each quarter. I phoned British Gas and a very helpful lady took all the details. I was asked to find out what Mum has as income (State Pension, Attendance Allowance, Pension Credit and Council Tax Relief) As we live 100 miles from Mum I phoned her and asked her to get all the information to hand and the British Gas lady then set up a three way telephone call. The result was that Mum has now been put onto the Essentials Tariff which gives her 10% off her gas bill. She is now considering having her electric with British Gas too which would mean a 30% discount on the Essentials Tariff. Mum is very happy and was intrigued with the three way conversation! The British Gas lady was so patient and most helpful.

It makes me wonder how many other elderly people might qualify for this special tariff - as long as the household income does not exceed £15,000 a year they should be able to qualify. Might be worth looking into if you have elderly relatives especially if they are on certain benefits. Hope some of you might get a better deal from this posting.

Cardew

CarH,
These 'social' or 'hardship' tariffs are covered quite a lot on MSE.

However it worth pointing out that often the on-line deals with various companies are cheaper. This is an extract from Martin's guide

If you're in financial trouble some companies offer special cheaper tariffs, which help. However you can't assume these will be the cheapest. As you're online (or you wouldn't be reading this), it's possible the cheapest web tariff will beat many hardship deals.

It is appreciated than many older people will not be on-line.

CarH_2

Thanks for the response Cardew. Appreciate what you say and for the time being Mum is quite happy but we will certainly explore other avenues to try and get her a better deal. It would mean us taking over the account as suggested elsewhere in these forums(which she may not agree to being a somewhat independant lady!) and maybe setting things up on line.

macman

The main thing is to get off her Standard tariff. Always amazes me the number of people (by no means all elderly and without an internet connection) who remain on Standard tariffs, despite all the publicity about rising fuel prices.

Plushchris

macman wrote: »

The main thing is to get off her Standard tariff. Always amazes me the number of people (by no means all elderly and without an internet connection) who remain on Standard tariffs, despite all the publicity about rising fuel prices.

The other thing that always amazes me is the number of people who will refuse to switch suppliers and are still with BG and the regional supplier..

Someone said to me the other day "Whats the point of changing, they are all as bad as each other"

Dont disagree with the second part but if they are all as bad as each other then why not be with the cheapest??

macman

People think that because it's got 'British' in the name, it must be somehow 'good' or 'reliable'.
BA, BT, and BG all still get huge benefits from this 'national' branding.
Maybe we should ban publicly owned companies from naming themselves in this way?
Didn't work quite so well for BP of course...