LPG contract on metered estate

GL10LPGuser

I am one of 23 households being supplied with LPG from a central supply. We all agreed to sign a 2 year contract which has now expired. During the 2 years there have been changes of ownership in a few of the properties. The new owners entered an 2 year agreement. The majority of us who haven't moved have been told that we are tied to our current supplier until the last contract expires. Hence we have no contract and are not in a position to negotiate a new one. Has anyone else had a similar experience and is there anything we can do?

LittleVermin

GL10LPGuser wrote: »

I am one of 23 households being supplied with LPG from a central supply. We all agreed to sign a 2 year contract which has now expired. During the 2 years there have been changes of ownership in a few of the properties. The new owners entered an 2 year agreement. The majority of us who haven't moved have been told that we are tied to our current supplier until the last contract expires. Hence we have no contract and are not in a position to negotiate a new one. Has anyone else had a similar experience and is there anything we can do?

Welcome to the forum.

Your problem is standard for metered estates - judging by other posts on the forum. One supplier even got a new short-term tenant to sign ... thus locking the whole estate into another 2 yrs. The OFT Off-grid Energy Report last autumn said the switching rate for metered estates was tiny, despite the Competition Commission's attempt to get some competition into the LPG 'market'. [You probably know this document - the CC Metered Estate Order? The switching rate for metered estates is less than 1%, see table 5.4. on p145 of the report].

This post may be of help: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=37031086&postcount=221

And I'd email Sharon Dias at the Office for Fair Trading - [EMAIL="sharon.dias@oft.gsi.gov.uk"]sharon.dias@oft.gsi.gov.uk[/EMAIL]
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[Deleted User]

GL10LPGuser wrote: »

I am one of 23 households being supplied with LPG from a central supply. We all agreed to sign a 2 year contract which has now expired. During the 2 years there have been changes of ownership in a few of the properties. The new owners entered an 2 year agreement. The majority of us who haven't moved have been told that we are tied to our current supplier until the last contract expires. Hence we have no contract and are not in a position to negotiate a new one. Has anyone else had a similar experience and is there anything we can do?

This is the thing when people move into metered estates. Rightly or wrongly they assume it's just like having an account with say npower and are responsible for there own supply.

This is not the case and is a very unfair system. They make it almost impossible to switch so everyone has to suffer high fuel prices. The price conversion between ppl and m3 is so confusing you have to be LittleVermin or HateLPG to understand it

We almost moved into such an estate a few years ago but our bid was to low so with hind sight a lucky escape really...

Several friends are on metered estates but never really talked to them about it, might me a sore point, but we still have our bulk LPG tank. The bomb as my nephew calls it

In a nutshell you are stuck

cannychecker

Has anyone any updates relating to terms being offered by the suppliers of lpg to metered estates? The last major post I can find is #221 by LPG Customer. All of our estate is out of contract, but we are being asked to sign up for two years with a price only guaranteed for 6 months and either no cap thereafter or a cap with 'get out' terms which favour the supplier.