Why are standing charges increasing rapidly

GunJack

wild666 said:

wittynamegoeshere said:

Aren't standing charges excluded from the cap for fixed tariffs?  They could offer you a deal for £5 a day in the hope that you were daft enough to take it.

I suspect that many are (finally) starting to look at the unit price, and energy suppliers have worked this out.  So they're hoping to hide a chunk of extra profit in the standing charge instead.

In a similar but opposite way, home broadband/phone deals are usually compared using the fixed monthly fee, including by MSE.  But when you look at the call and/or call package costs they're often horrendous.  This is the sort of thing these businesses do, they appear cheap according to whatever the likes of MSE use to compare, and hide their profit in the bits that many don't look at.

I haven't used my landline in over 10 years yet when I was with BT they still charged me for line rental the only thing I needed the line for was the BB connection. 

totally normal.... no line, no bb. 

Astria

GunJack said:

wild666 said:

wittynamegoeshere said:

Aren't standing charges excluded from the cap for fixed tariffs?  They could offer you a deal for £5 a day in the hope that you were daft enough to take it.

I suspect that many are (finally) starting to look at the unit price, and energy suppliers have worked this out.  So they're hoping to hide a chunk of extra profit in the standing charge instead.

In a similar but opposite way, home broadband/phone deals are usually compared using the fixed monthly fee, including by MSE.  But when you look at the call and/or call package costs they're often horrendous.  This is the sort of thing these businesses do, they appear cheap according to whatever the likes of MSE use to compare, and hide their profit in the bits that many don't look at.

I haven't used my landline in over 10 years yet when I was with BT they still charged me for line rental the only thing I needed the line for was the BB connection. 

totally normal.... no line, no bb. 

However, BT have been doing broadband only deals for a while now - you just can't use the line for making or receiving calls (including calls to the emergency services)

wild666

GunJack said:

wild666 said:

wittynamegoeshere said:

Aren't standing charges excluded from the cap for fixed tariffs?  They could offer you a deal for £5 a day in the hope that you were daft enough to take it.

I suspect that many are (finally) starting to look at the unit price, and energy suppliers have worked this out.  So they're hoping to hide a chunk of extra profit in the standing charge instead.

In a similar but opposite way, home broadband/phone deals are usually compared using the fixed monthly fee, including by MSE.  But when you look at the call and/or call package costs they're often horrendous.  This is the sort of thing these businesses do, they appear cheap according to whatever the likes of MSE use to compare, and hide their profit in the bits that many don't look at.

I haven't used my landline in over 10 years yet when I was with BT they still charged me for line rental the only thing I needed the line for was the BB connection. 

totally normal.... no line, no bb. 

I have a line but just don't use it or answer calls on it and my BB provider isn't BT.