Ebico do not have daily standing charges

Cardew

Wywth wrote: »

Nothing at all, but Ebico are not going to.

As I understand the 192 page Ofgem proposals, a daily standing charge can be any amount starting as low as 0.0p per day

This is a cause for concern. The orginal proposal was for Ofgem to set the daily standing charge so that all suppliers would charge the same. That would mean there would be an easily comparable single unit cost for customers to compare.
But Ofgem caved in, and now suppliers can set their own standing charge - some suppliers even have different standing charges within their own tariff range :eek:
(In fact they can also change by, for example, day of the week! - but I don't think any supplier does this yet)
Confusion will still reign. Thank god for comparison sites

The variation in standing charges was discussed in last weekends BBC moneybox
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s7tpz (12mins 20 seconds onwards)

Agreed.

I posted this in another thread discussing the new tariffs.

Ironically it was pressure from organisations, including MSE, that have led to
the daily standing charge as they claimed 2 tier tariffs were too complicated
for the average customer to understand!

So we have now simply 'jumped out
of the frying pan etc'.

I am also on a fixed tariff until Nov 2014.
However if I needed a tariff now, as a high user, by far the cheapest tariff
for me would be with NPower who have very high Daily Standing Charge of
50.61p gas and 44.42p electricity(£347 a year) but unit
prices for gas/electricity are low at 3.53p/kWh and 10.301p/kWh
respectively. In addition they have 3 discounts I need to take into account.


IMO anyone who failed to understand the 'complexities' of the tier
system of tariffs, will be just as confused by the latest 'simplified' tariffs
as the amount of the standing charge and various discounts all have to be taken
into account, as well as knowing your annual consumption in kWh.

macman

ian1969uk wrote: »

Might sound like a daft question, but if Ebico are not for profit, why aren't they much cheaper than companies who have a profit element built into their prices?

I just did a quote for Ebico and they are almost 50% higher than the best of the comparison website quotes.

Because their cost base is presumably higher. You might equally ask, why aren't the Co-op always cheaper than Tesco, or Nationwide cheaper than Halifax?