Standing Charges guide - official forum discussion

mark21667

Was with SSE for gas for 3 years with no standing charge. Was well happy and paying 16 quid a year for gas. Moved to Ebico when SSE started charging. Ebico were supplying my old gas to SSE and I'd heard of Ebico zero. Signed up and it seems they now want 25p a day despite nothing changing on my end. Have a card meter same as always. Are there any places with no standing charge for gas customers on a card meter?

Superbird

I am another one who has been screwed over by SSE/Ebico (they claim to have given advance warning in March, but I never heard a peep until August) and Ofgem's silly rate cap. I only use a trickle of juice and sometimes never use any gas from one year's end to the next. It is proving incredibly difficult to find any alternative. My requirements are very simple:

- No standing charge, so it doesn't keep racking up cost uncontrollably regardless of whether I'm using it or not.
- PAYG, so I only pay when I've got the money and never have to pay more than I've got, and never get hit with some whacking great lump that I can't pay because I never see that much money in a lump.
- No spy meters (laughingly known as "smart meters" by their propagandists).

As long as those basic requirements are met I really don't much care what the actual cost per unit is, or whether it ends up more expensive in total than what I've been used to. The important thing is that the expense should be entirely under my control and never come in larger lumps than I can cope with at any one time. It's no use something being cheaper in total, if the individual chunks are too large to pay.

The principal difficulty in searching is that absolutely nowhere, not suppliers nor comparison sites (nor, apparently, Ofgem), has any understanding that the cheaper options are designed so that only people with a lot of money can make use of them. They just assume without thought that the options are equally accessible to all, and it is impossible to get away from the implementational insistence that total annual cost is the one and only significant criterion.

Every site works the same unhelpful way: they insist on trying to "compare my usage" and "give me a quote" to reduce total annual cost. The process is totally opaque and it is impossible to know how many potentially useful tariffs they have decided not to tell me about on the spurious grounds that they're not the cheapest per annum. It is similarly impossible to guess how to alter the information I put in so as to trick it into showing other tariffs - and it doesn't help that many sites suffer from some weird kind of rounding errors so that when I enter my very small usage it changes it to a negative number and throws an error. Many sites, indeed, are so unhelpful that even when you do find a tariff it isn't possible to see whether or not it includes a standing charge.

(Not to mention the numerous sites that simply don't work at all without me writing a couple of pages of code to correct the errors, but this isn't the place for that.)

All I want is a straightforward list, a table that lists all the tariffs available in each of the 14(?) geographical areas, with details of the unit rate, standing charge, methods of payment, and meter restrictions if any. It would then be a doddle to pick out from the list the one that best suited me, and it would remove all the frustration and annoyance of trying to get the better of some computer that is choosing by criteria that I don't care about. The information must be available otherwise none of these comparison efforts would be possible at all, and it is ridiculous that you have to peck about fishing for individual data items with a blunt hook instead of simply being able to download the lot and after five minutes of reading spear the item you really want with a laser-guided needle.

So far I have found precisely TWO possibilities, and neither of them looks much as if they stand any chance of becoming probabilities:

- An outfit with the idiotically unsearchable name of "E" (website: e.org) show a couple of PAYG ZSC tariffs, so I wrote to them, but they are trying to tell me that they are "due to be discontinued" and offering me alternatives that do have a standing charge (whether or not they have other alternatives that don't meet the "annual cost ueber alles" criterion but are ZSC I don't know; none of the purported alternative tariffs have appeared on the comparison sites yet so I can't try and check).

- "Eversmart" have something called "Goodbye Standing Charge" which shows up on some comparison sites if you turn off "only show suppliers we can help you switch to", but none of them even link to it and how you actually get from there to here is less than obvious.

I shall try and remember to post back if I do find anything useful, but it really isn't looking all that hopeful at the moment.

1kevfp

I am switching from BG as my MSE collective finishes 03 Oct, I have got the ovo fixed 2 year plan as suggested and the Avro fixed 1 year in mind which has a cheaper standing charge than ovo. ?uestion please - as we are out of the the country during the winter months am I better off with a cheaper standing charge? We do leave the gas central heating on low to comply with the insurance company and the lighting is on low voltage timer lights , thanks

lin_e

the blog states: "To help you find them, our 'No Standing Charge' filter on Cheap Energy Club lets you see deals with zero standing charges only."
I went to the link and it did NOT offer me any such filter. I am trying to locate all tariffs available in the UK that offer a no standing charge option and this info is hidden no matter where I look. I DO NOT wish to inform the switching site of how much I energy use and infinitismal info about my personal demographics what I want is a straight forward list of tariffs with unit rates and daily charges for all tariffs available so that I can make an informed decision. I think the switching sites are a CON as they are all designed to withhold this info until after you have revealed all this personal info and it has then supposedly identified how much £'s you will save. ALL THAT IS NEEDED IS A LIST OF kwh prices in pence and daily charges - where can I locate this info?

lin_e

1kevfp wrote: »

I am switching from BG as my MSE collective finishes 03 Oct, I have got the ovo fixed 2 year plan as suggested and the Avro fixed 1 year in mind which has a cheaper standing charge than ovo. ?uestion please - as we are out of the the country during the winter months am I better off with a cheaper standing charge? We do leave the gas central heating on low to comply with the insurance company and the lighting is on low voltage timer lights , thanks

my feeling is that if you are using the gas every day then it is worth your while to have a standing charge and lower usage rate.

the people who should benefit from no standing charge are people who don't use the gas at all in the summer and especially those on prepayment meters who need to be able to go away for a few day and not have a debt on the account when they get home or who can't afford to top up as much as they want and need to know that when they are not using energy, no debt is being accrued.

BobSSS

Went with a no standing charge supplier - Solarplicity. As far as I can tell their customer service function literally does not exist. Transfer meter readings were way wrong. All attempts to contact them by phone and email have failed. Steer clear!!

skiggy

Hi, I have tried your comparison site to find a utility with no standing charges for gas or electricity, that does the 'Warm Energy' scheme, on monthly Direct Debit. Nothing. As soon as I remove the No Standing Charge filter I get a bag full of offers..

meldrew58

Can anyone please tell me if there are now any companies that do not have a standing charge for gas and electricity for an unoccupied property? Think we had this with Ebico a couple of years back but I gather from other posts that this is no longer on. Any help much appreciated.

[Deleted User]

Go to any price comparison site and enter low annual kWh values for electricity and gas (some sites may require you to enter a minimum so try 1000kWh annually). This show the cheapest options for your needs and you can check the details.
Some suppliers only supply certain areas so you need to do a price search to get your answers.

molerat

MSE CEC has a no standing charge tick box option. Brings up Solarplicity, Utilita and Ebico for me.