Need Some Help Guys Swalec Social Tariff Scrapped :(

UnderPressure

I wonder if some of you could offer me some advice, we have been n Swalecs Energy Plus Social Tariff now for about 2 years, we have a pre-payment meter because we owed them some money, because we were using more than 10% of our income on energy we qualified for this reduced tariff which knocked our electricity price down from 15p per kw/h to 8.5p. At one stage before we changed to this tariff we were putting anything upto £50 per week on the electric meter :eek:

Since switching it has averaged out around £25 per week until this week, I noticed this morning we were running low again after putting £40 on it in the last 5 days so I clicked through the screen on the meter to discover that we were now paying 15.9p per kw/h and had obviously been take off the social tariff.

I have just spent the last hour on the phone to Swalec only to be told that we have indeed been taken off the social tariff as the social tariff has now been scrapped! They say it has been replaced with a winter grant of £120 which I do not qualify for as I do not receive any means tested benefits on their list such as Income Support, Job Seekers Allowance or some form of ESA. This will mean for us an extra £20 a week at the very least in electricity or £80is a month, we just cannot afford that we were struggling putting £25 a week on the dam thing without having to put even more on it, when I put the point across that this was completely unfair and why had nobody bothered to at least write to me to let me know I was simply told that all the big 6 had done the same thing and it was basically tough luck!

What can I do? We cannot be affording the best part of £160 a month just on electricity, we are already being flogged to death by the oil companies as we have oil fired central heating, we pay around £150 a month in Winter just ti stop icicles inside the house! That would be £310ish a month just on heating and electricity, that is almost 30% of what we have coming in the dam door!

I was thinking about complaining to OFGEM however looking at their site they do not handle complaints and have directed me to consumer direct. I am feeling totally screwed, with 3 young children this is going to cause us a severe nightmare, any help appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Joyful

The first thing I would advise is to get your consumption and go on a comparison site. If you are using as much electric as you say you need to work out why. It may help you to borrow an Energy monitor from a local library.

All suppliers are ending their social tariffs so there is nothing you can do about that. If you are not on any qualifying benefits to get the Warm Home discount then you need to make sure you are on the cheapest price for electric and cut down your consumption.

If you s till have any debt and it is less than £200 you can still change supplier.

PasturesNew

What are you using it on? If we assume you're using £60/month on lights, telly, PC, fridge/freezer, shower, cooker, then that's £100/month on electric heating.

£100 / 15p = 666kWh/month
Divided by 30 days is 22 kWh/day

That's like three electric 1kW fan heaters on in three rooms solidly for seven hours/day at 15p/hour each.

UnderPressure

Joyful wrote: »

The first thing I would advise is to get your consumption and go on a comparison site. If you are using as much electric as you say you need to work out why. It may help you to borrow an Energy monitor from a local library.

All suppliers are ending their social tariffs so there is nothing you can do about that. If you are not on any qualifying benefits to get the Warm Home discount then you need to make sure you are on the cheapest price for electric and cut down your consumption.

If you s till have any debt and it is less than £200 you can still change supplier.

Hello thanks for taking the time to reply I appreciate it, I am looking at the latest statement I could find, they only send them once in a blue moon this one is from 26th June 2010 to 7th April 2011 we used a total of 7631 units or kw/h's in that period.

Sadly Swalec have me in a hole, I owed them originally just under 2k, that is now down to £764, they take £5 a week through the meter so it will be around 2 yearsish before I get to the £200 threshold to move supplier unless I can come up with a plan to somehow pay it off quicker but with this new increase of around £80 a month there is not much chance of that

PasturesNew wrote: »

What are you using it on? If we assume you're using £60/month on lights, telly, PC, fridge/freezer, shower, cooker, then that's £100/month on electric heating.

£100 / 15p = 666kWh/month
Divided by 30 days is 22 kWh/day

That's like three electric 1kW fan heaters on in three rooms solidly for seven hours/day at 15p/hour each.

Again thanks for taking the time to reply I do appreciate it To be honest I have no idea where it goes, it astonishes me we use so much the main culprit with probably be the washer and dryer although they are both only a couple of years old and both A rated for energy the dam things are never off! There are 5 of us, me my partner and 3 children so there is a fair amount of washing but every time I pass them they are on! This has just resulted in a massive falling out with my partner who has now accused me of blaming her for using loads of electric when I was simply trying to figure out a way we could be more frugal.

Now and again (like now!) we run out of heating oil and have to wait a few days before I can go and get some more, when this happens we has electric oil filled radiators that are used in the childrens bedrooms, these can be on from around 6:30pm to 10pm when we are out of oil. We have an electric cooker that is on a fair amount then it is just the usual stuff, TV, laptop, kids things such as tv's games console, lights fridge in the kitchen, freezer in the garage thats about it really.

I suppose I am just going to have to stop moaning about it and get on with it, cut back here and there and try and build a bit of a balance up over Summer. I hate the idea of them having me over a barrel though, because I owe them money I cannot have this dam pre payment meter taken out so cannot switch to a cheaper tariff, same reason I cannot switch supplier I am beaten whatever way I look at it

UnderPressure

Just had a look on the USwitch website and with OVO Energy (whoever they are??) I could get the charge down to 9.97p per kw/h paying by monthly direct debit. Even more depressed now EVERYBODY even on prepayment plans are loads cheaper than Swalec

macman

It's not the tariff that is the issue, it's your consumption! You appear to be using around 9,000kWh pa (pro-rata-ing up from 10m to 12), that's about 2 and a half times what might be expected for a house with no-electric heating and hot water.
You need to get a handle on this and track down the cause. Start by calling your supplier and getting your actual annual usage figures.

WestonDave

You're using nearly 4 times the electricity we use in a 3 bed house and that's with me liking long hot showers under a 9kw electric shower! Something in your house is massively eating electricity - you need to find it and cut it back.

Switch everything off at the main switch - at this point the meter should be still. Whilst it is off, go round the house and unplug everything and switch everything off (e.g. immersion heater). Then put the main switch back on. If the meter starts moving you've missed something - find it and switch it off. Once you have it all off, you can put the fridge and freezer back on. The trick then is to gradually start turning things back on until you find what is making that meter race round - likely culprits are heating devices - electric shower, immersion heater, electric heaters, tumble dryer etc.

If you can get your electricity consumption down by half you'll still be using double the amount I am but will be spending the same as you were before.