MSE News: Green Deal launches to help insulate homes

neo3670

Why does everything have to be so complicated? I have been following the green deal progress with interest for over a year now, from a simple idea, that everyone should be able to have energy saving products installed that will pay for themselves, and enable the householder to save money by using less energy..... and it now seems to have evolved into a complex, confusing beast, that will be missold and monopolised.... why cant we just keep things simple? Hmmmm, oh yeah it involves government.....just like 'quantitive easing' ......here we go again!

victor2

It sounds like it's just a red flag to potential house buyers. Imagine you put all your savings and expected income into a nice new house, only to find the utility bills will carry a £xx a month surcharge for the next 10 years to pay for the nice new "efficient" heating system you paid for when you bought the house...

Edit: Add to that, how would you go about changing energy suppliers if the property had one of these loans in place?

gizz

I've seen a number of posts on another forum recently where householders were considering getting a 10k Green Deal package, not worrying at all about the costs because they intended moving within 3 years.

Great if it adds 20k to your house value, but it's highly unlikely and what's most likely to happen is a) it puts most prospective buyers off b) you end up buying out the loan including all of the interest to be able to sell the house without any ties.

The only people who I think can benefit from this would be pensioners with no cash but equity in their homes. They may feel this keeps them in their home longer and if they haven't family to leave the family home to it doesn't matter if there's a tie to the house.

The problem is this group of people are the most vulnerable and ost liakely to succumb to hard sales tactics and mis-selling.

Consumerist

Sounds to me that the energy companies are going to have a field day on this one. Isn't it they who will determine the "expected" savings? If they are as good at estimating energy savings as they are at estimating energy use for setting DDs then I think we, the consumer, are going to be screwed.

Just a faint suspicion, you understand.

Edit
This, for example, stinks :-

The "golden rule" ensures the expected savings on bills for a home like yours will be at least as big as the repayments, including interest.

penrhyn

I had my first Green Deal cold call the other day, yet another scheme for cowboys to rip off the consumer.
I took the trouble to check the assessors and providers in my area, not a single household name among them.

gbger

Not sure what benefit this new Green Deal offers. Any savings made on renewable energy installations will be swallowed up by repayments on the loan to have them fitted. Also try selling a house where the new owner will have to take over the debt.

sourcrates

Well at first i was very interested in this scheme,I had heard nothing about it until today, :rotfl: as we are in need of a new boiler, double glazed front door and possibly one or two other things as well, i thought FANTASTIC !! as we cant afford to do the work ourselves, then the confusion started, on some websites it says "scheme available to all with no credit checks", then i read another site which completly contradicts this statement, and you DO have to be credit checked, now as i am in an IVA this is not good news, the available info is different depending which provier site you look at, and there are many, also the initial assessment costs about £99, although I have found two providers that do it for nowt !!, just worried about how i stand with being in the IVA i cant find any info for my situation:mad:.

gizz

If you've got an IVA do you really want to tie yourself into high interest loan to improve the efficiency of your home? If you install solid wall insulation it'll save about £250 a year and you'll need to pay it back at about £220 - £230 so you're not really saving that much but attaching a huge loan to your house.

Social housing providers and uncsrupulous private landlords are loving it - instead of upgrading the homes for their tenants with their money the tenant pays it for them - they can't lose!

petesellit

This has got to be the stupidest ill thought out scheme I have ever heard off.

No wonder certain so called comparison website are pushing it! they make money out of it.

Stinks!

:mad:

Butterfly_Brain

The only ones who will profit from this scheme are the fat cat loan sharks and the shifty energy companies, it has usury written all over it especially as interest rates are 0.5% and they want to charge 7%.