Scottish Power standing charge

amtrakuk

Ian_Vestor wrote: »

SP have just put me on to a new electricity tariff that will increase my next year's bill by 3900 (yes that's correct) percent. This is due to the introduction of a standing charge. They say this has been forced on them by OFGEM who have not replied to my correspondence seeking to check the veracity of what SP tell me.

Has anyone heard of a move to prohibit tariffs that do not carry a standing charge?

A 3900% increase... How much total energy are you using?

As far as I can see the average energy bill is £100 a month or £1200 a year. A 3,900% increase will work out at well £4k a year! Have you tried closing a window?

If you only use £30 a month on energy thats very good going one of my friends lives in a 1 bed attic room flat of a house, with switching the over skink water heater off and using the shared electric shower, living out of a microwave, only having 1 fridge, a freezer, a 7 watt CFL and a TV on most the time - very very occasionally having a 30 minute blast from a fan heater in winter. His bill is £36 a month. If you times my friends by 3900% that works out at £1404 a month or £42 a day standing charge!

I'm curious how you managed to get 3900% from?

matelodave

If you have an extremely low consumption you can come up with very large percentage increases if you didn't have a standing charge before.


For instance my mum had gas which was just connected to her hob - everything else was electric. So she only used about 3 kwh a quarter (just to boil the occasional egg), her average quarterly gas bill was about 75p as she didn't have a standing charge - sometimes it was zero if the meter hadn't moved and sometimes it would have shifted by one digit.
So the difference between her paying about £3 a year and having a £100 standing charge plus 48p worth of gas could be calculated out as an tremendous 3,350% increase. She's gone now so we don't have the problem.

amtrakuk

Ah yes I have heard of people having an all electric house except for cooking - guess she was on economy 7 which is not as economical as thought. In that case its only common sense to go all electric and get the gas taken out. If it was just to boil an egg, get a plug in electric ring that way there will be 0% increase.

Is the way things are going, the EU doesn't do U-Turns on decisions to plan for the here and now, not the past.

scumcompany

i half size property half amount of people living here twice the insellation....compared to previous address but gas bill has increased 400% due to standing charges etc. 70-80% of my costs go on standing charges