MSE News: Energy bills set to rocket for millions as price cap is hiked by £139/yr 6 August 2021 at 8:48AM edited 6 August 2021 at 8:49AM in Energy 23 replies 2.3K views

MSE_Andrew

Energy bills will rise by a typical £139/year for 11 million households in October, as regulator Ofgem revealed the new price cap level this morning – but most can beat the hikes by switching supplier....

Read the full story here:
'Energy bills set to rocket for millions as price cap is hiked by £139/yr to its highest-ever level – but many can save £240/yr by switching'

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variant

This is a serious kick in the teeth.
How can they justify hiking prices so much during a pandemic. Share holders should bear the brunt and profit expectations should be downgraded. All of the utilities companies should not cause more financial hardship.
PANDEMIC.!!!!!!!
Im disgusted with this.
Their moral compass needs some serious adjustment.😤😤😤😤😤😤😤

variant

The whole financial system needs to take a step back and think harder how they can HELP during a pandemic. Millions of people are SUFFERING hardship and they just slap us in the face and say “ get on with it” “ we’re alright Jack.”😤😤😤😤😤😤😤

Dolor

variant said:

This is a serious kick in the teeth.
How can they justify hiking prices so much during a pandemic. Share holders should bear the brunt and profit expectations should be downgraded. All of the utilities companies should not cause more financial hardship.
PANDEMIC.!!!!!!!
Im disgusted with this.
Their moral compass needs some serious adjustment.😤😤😤😤😤😤😤

The Ofgem cap is no longer the solution, it has become part of the problem. That said, however the dice are rolled the simple fact is that there has been a massive increase in the wholesale cost of energy since April as the World has opened up. This is down to a number of factors including an increase in the cost of oil and gas, and a lack of nuclear generation in the UK as reactors are either decommissioned or put into long-term maintenance.  If suppliers are to stay in business, then they have little option but to pass these increases on to their consumers.

Very few of the smaller suppliers actually have shareholders as such, and many suppliers are making significant losses.  A former CEO of Ofgem is predicting that there will be a raft of energy supplier failures this coming Winter. Sadly, the cost of these failures will be added to the Cap in April next year.

The UK energy market is not in a good place.

variant

We are allowing the elites to hold us to ransom with their costs. They have all that wealth and cannot employ people that can predict trends and keep it all fair. They need bringing back down to Earth. We know that they manipulate the markets and availability for their own ends.
If there were any governments that weren’t owned by them we could fight back. Centralisation of assets and wealth has ruined democratic societies.

brewerdave

variant said:

We are allowing the elites to hold us to ransom with their costs. They have all that wealth and cannot employ people that can predict trends and keep it all fair. They need bringing back down to Earth. We know that they manipulate the markets and availability for their own ends.
If there were any governments that weren’t owned by them we could fight back. Centralisation of assets and wealth has ruined democratic societies.

And what has your ideological rant got to do with the OFGEM price cap ??

MattMattMattUK

variant said:

This is a serious kick in the teeth.

Not really, it is just a fact of life.

variant said:

How can they justify hiking prices so much during a pandemic. 

The wholesale energy price has gone through the roof, the rises on the wholesale market are far more than is being passed on to consumers.

variant said:

Share holders should bear the brunt and profit expectations should be downgraded. 

Why? And it needs to be a proper reason, not just "I don't like it".

variant said:

All of the utilities companies should not cause more financial hardship.

The utility companies are not causing financial hardship, the are providing a service and charging for it.

variant said:

PANDEMIC.!!!!!!!
Im disgusted with this.
Their moral compass needs some serious adjustment.😤😤😤😤😤😤😤

Shouting does not achieve anything. Their "moral compass"? I would question yours, you seem to expect to receive a service below cost, because you do not want to pay the cost.

variant said:

The whole financial system needs to take a step back and think harder how they can HELP during a pandemic.

The financial services sector is first and foremost a business, second it is owned by shareholders who engage in that business for a (very low) return on their investment. The choice is that either the sector offers a service at a profit, or that service is not offered.

variant said:

Millions of people are SUFFERING hardship and they just slap us in the face and say “ get on with it” “ we’re alright Jack.”😤😤😤😤😤😤😤

So do you expect the people who work at utilities or financial services to work for free? Do you expect shareholders to invest and risk their money for no reward? Or would you rather just shout and post emojis?

variant said:

We are allowing the elites to hold us to ransom with their costs. 

Financial services have a net margin of around 2-3%, it is similar for utilities. The government makes 5% VAT on utilities, more than the profit. If all of the profit was eradicated from mortgages and they were somehow done on a charity basis the average cost of a mortgage would drop by £4 pcm, the average utility bill would drop by around £2 pcm.

variant said:

They have all that wealth and cannot employ people that can predict trends and keep it all fair. They need bringing back down to Earth. We know that they manipulate the markets and availability for their own ends.

Markets can be manipulated to an extent, but not in the way you think, most of the time they just predict trends, which are fairly obvious. Even MSE and Martin Lewis have been saying again and again for 2-3 years now that energy bills will be rising long term due to the global trends.

variant said:

If there were any governments that weren’t owned by them we could fight back. Centralisation of assets and wealth has ruined democratic societies.

People can vote for whoever they want, but at the end of the day we do not want some lunatic fringe wholesale redistribution, most people are quite happy with their lives. 

Just as a point, we have some of the cheapest utilities in Europe, away from countries where they are subsidised (mostly in Eastern Europe), we have about mid priced petrol, but the profit is actually the second lowest in Europe, most of the cost of petrol is tax and duty. We have some of the cheapest financial services in the world, lowest interest rates, most free banking etc.

PennyForThem_2

There are 15 million households in this country who do not appear to switch at all or do it spasmodically.  (I am astounded there are so many - maybe needs a statistical check.....) 

If they switched they would save money.  There is help out there for them to enable them to switch to a cheaper tarrif. 

Sorry, not much sympathy especially when utility companies put on their bills when a tarrif they offer can be bettered by another tarrif offered by themselves - not perfect but hey......how much effort does it take to contact to be put on a cheaper tarrif offered by the same company?

variant

The wind farm energy is held back by the other industries. I was told by an insider that a lot of the potential energy is wasted. That’s all I need to know.

KxMx

Our energy usage is way below the average figures, so it's hard to figure out how much our bills will go up by. 

Dolor

I would encourage those that can to take a look at the article in today’s Daily Telegraph written by Stephen Littlemore - an ex CEO of Ofgem. He opines that the price cap is now no longer needed, and that Ofgem’s proposed automatic switching of consumers is a very bad idea.