Special administration

emmajones1976

Rich2808 said:

Can we have one bulb thread moderators?

The light bulbs haven't gone out - Bulb is still in business albeit carrying on via a taxpayer bailout. The lights will stay on - and you will still pay your bills to them - for now.

EVERYONE will have to pay their bills whether they go under or not.

TonySimon

Too many forum police sniffing about here recently.

DiseasedBunny

Rich2808 said:

 The lights will stay on - and you will still pay your bills to them - for now.

But at what rate?

Taking numbers to the extremes, why should bulb customers pay say 5p a kwh, carry on paying that because they havent "gone bust", and yet a neon reef customer will now be paying 20p+ a kwh, simply because NR wasnt a 1m+ customer base?

daveyjp

DiseasedBunny said:

Rich2808 said:

 The lights will stay on - and you will still pay your bills to them - for now.

But at what rate?

Taking numbers to the extremes, why should bulb customers pay say 5p a kwh, carry on paying that because they havent "gone bust", and yet a neon reef customer will now be paying 20p+ a kwh, simply because NR wasnt a 1m+ customer base?

Thats depends on how the never used before administration rules work.

Customers may not be on very low rates for much longer.

Rich2808

emmajones1976 said:

Rich2808 said:

Can we have one bulb thread moderators?

The light bulbs haven't gone out - Bulb is still in business albeit carrying on via a taxpayer bailout. The lights will stay on - and you will still pay your bills to them - for now.

EVERYONE will have to pay their bills whether they go under or not.

Yes - I meant pay their bills to Bulb for now.

Once a new supplier has been found by OFGEM to take on these customers they will be moved over and will pay their bills to the new provider.

And presumably Bulb will then disappear.

QrizB

DiseasedBunny said:

Rich2808 said:

 The lights will stay on - and you will still pay your bills to them - for now.

But at what rate?

Taking numbers to the extremes, why should bulb customers pay say 5p a kwh, carry on paying that because they havent "gone bust", and yet a neon reef customer will now be paying 20p+ a kwh, simply because NR wasnt a 1m+ customer base?

In the specific case of Bulb, your concerns are misplaced. From the first page of this thread:

QrizB said:

oliverbrown said:

Does putting a company into "special administration" solve much? At least when a company goes to a SoLR the most loss-making fixed tariffs can be cancelled.
It seems Bulb will just continue to lose money hand-over-fist, but under different control.

Bulb only has one generally-available tariff, their vari-fair variable one. That was already at the Ofgem cap and we can expect it to continue unchanged.

EssexHebridean

What rate? Well the capped rate surely - which presumably vari-fair wasn't far short of anyway, by now? We had contact from them before leaving in August thus:
Your new prices                          Current prices                                New prices
                                                    Until 30 September                        From 1 October
Electricity Day rate (p per kWh)  20.854p                                          23.284p
Night rate (p per kWh)                 12.345p                                         13.779p
Standing charge (p perday)         23.587p                                          24.090p

Thrugelmir

oliverbrown said:

QrizB said:

That's my understanding, yes.

Interesting. Which makes it all the more surprising they failed when they had much more control over their tariffs than companies offering fixed deals.

Like the other demised energy companies they didn't have the financial firepower to hedge their future purchasing against unexpected sharp market movements. No one expected Chinese companies to be instructed to source gas supplies "at any cost". 

wild666

Bulb are operating on prices at around the price cap of 3100 kWh E and 12,000 kWh G and these rates mean they will lose money every day.

bagand96

oliverbrown said:

QrizB said:

That's my understanding, yes.

Interesting. Which makes it all the more surprising they failed when they had much more control over their tariffs than companies offering fixed deals.

They didn't have much control though.  Because they only offered one tariff, their SVT, then that was subject to the Ofgem price cap.  The current Ofgem price cap is well below the actual cost of the energy on the wholesale market.  So in theory every single customer is loss making.

It's not quite that straight forward as energy companies buy their energy in advance (called hedging).  No idea how well Bulb were/are hedged though.