Understanding Electricity Standing Charges

irelavv

Hello.

I've recently moved to a new home and I am responsible for paying the bills. So far in the past, everywhere I've lived I had to pay a standing charge (SC) for both gas and electricity.

However, now I have learnt that my prepay electricity meter does not have a SC tariff! I've checked all relevant meter screens and there is £0.00 debt, £0.00 SC per week, and, so far, I have lived on £2 credit of electricity for an entire week since I don't use a lot and the price is only 15p per kWh...

My question is how is this even possible? I also know that OVO Energy supply my address but now they've become Boost. After searching on both websites and on Google I have found that in the past years neither companies have even offered a £0 electricity SC tariff.

I'm sure I'm probably missing something because it seems to good to be true; or maybe there was a tariff the previous occupier took advantage of and now it's still being used?

Any ideas would be welcomed

Gerry1

When your local electricity board was the monopoly supplier, the standing charge was an attempt to apportion costs fairly between light and heavy users. It's an arbitrary attempt to reflect the costs of making the infrastructure and labour force available whether or not you use any energy.

With competition there is no need for a One Size Fits All approach. Some suppliers have chosen to recover their costs solely through metered units, others have lowish unit charges but high standing charges. You pays your money and takes your choice - shop around !

You'll probably find that your energy charges with a prepay meter will be significantly higher (check the price per kWh), so you may wish to switch to a credit meter which is likely to be more convenient anyway. The lack of a standing charge is unlikely to be very beneficial unless the usage is very low, e.g. a lock up garage or second home.

The previous occupant may have had concerns about running up an unexpectedly high bill that they would be unable to pay, or the energy company may have required a pre-pay meter if there was a history of debt.

UPDATE: Most regions seem to have an (expensive) Electricity Standing Charge of 31.74p per day. That will probably apply to you as a new customer, so don't assume that any No Standing Charge will last. How are you topping up?

brewerdave

Did you inform the supplier when you became responsible for the property? Did you read the meter and supply OVO (?) with the reading??
Are you living on the credit left by the previous occupier??

PennineAcute

Ithink something is amiss somewhere. Boost do not do No Standing Charge. Their standing charge is around 30p a day.

JennyJukes

I had a client with a different energy company and this was happening to her. What happened is when she moved into her tenancy and used her new prepayment key, it hadn't been set up correctly so it gave her 0p for her standing charges. We had to call the company who told her to take the key to a shop with a code that would reset it to the correct charges.

I personally would call the company and find out what's going on. Hopefully you won't get a big bill because it's probably their mistake.

irelavv

Yeah, I think that's probably what's going on - the key hasn't been set up correctly.
To answer a few Qs:
- Yes, Boost do not currently have no standing charge tariff but maybe they or OVO did in the past;
- I am topping up with an electricity key at a local PayPoint shop;
- Yes, I am living on the £2 credit from the previous occupier;
- Yes, I have informed Boost that I am the new tenant and I will be paying the bills - we agreed on a standard PAYG contract over the phone.

On a side note, I also obviously hope I won't get a big bill (although I don't really get bills because it's PAYG), however, it's been a holy nightmare trying to sort out the debt on the GAS prepay meter. After 4 calls to Boost, 3 unsuccessful trips to different shops with different codes (from Boost) and 2 visits from engineers they finally managed to wipe the previous occupier's debt. Just have to wait for a new gas card with a new code to take to a shop and pray this one works fine unlike the one before that...

I can only imagine what a massive headache reconfiguring my electricity key would be if it's anything similar to the gas card; and given previous experiences it's highly likely