When is "Fixed" not Fixed?

Robisere

Hi
We live in rented Sheltered Housing, are both retired and have disabilities. Our bungalow has only electricity (with Night Storage Heating) and our supplier is EDF. I used MSE and switched to the Fixed S@ver v2 E7 from Scottish Power. We thought that "Fixed" meant exactly that. Our initial monthly DD payment was £72:00, after paying ScotPower £90:00 a month, this seemed a good deal.

Then on Feb 7th this year we received a statement and Bill to say that were changing our DD to £280 a month, after a Review, stating that this was based upon a future monthly use of £280:00.
In shock, I questioned this by phone and eventually settled for a Single Payment of £175:23, with a future increase of the DD to £80:00.

This has now increased to £110:00 from 10th April this year.

Our contract End Date is 20/12/2012. I have searched all the comparison sites for a better deal, but everything I find is more expensive than the present EDF setup. I know that we will have to switch to a standard tariff when that happens, which will probably be a lot more than the current one.

How can EDF change our DD whenever they feel like it? I long for the days when we could do this via Standing Order!

Does anyone have any advice for us please?

alleycat`

Hi there,

Fixed means that the tariff "unit" price is fixed and won't be varied by the electric supplier.

It doesn't mean you pay a fixed amount every month for all you can eat, just that you'll always pay exactly the same amount per unit consumed, for the life of the tariff.

It seems to be a common misconception of what Fixed tariffs are.

undaunted

Alleycats explanation is obviously correct but even so it seems a huge jump.

Was £80 p/m covering your usage with Scot power?

If so has your consumption gone up markedly for some reason or is there some other change at work here?

Terrylw1

You need to find out why first starting with if you have been billed to estimate or actual readings.

Given the jump, its very possible there could be a reading problem or a transposition. These need ruling out before you worry about how you are going to pay for this.

If your usage has not altered and this has never happened before, it only reinforces the possibility of an error.

EDF are also well know for overinflated DD's and back down very easily if they set them too high.