News: Energy bills to rise by £700/yr for many | Chancellor unveils up to £350 households support

EssexHebridean

MingVase said:

Can anybody tell me  - if your energy provider puts up your D/D then do you have to pay that? Or can you haggle? We're with Octopus.

Do you provide regular meter readings, and if so does the supplier’s estimate of the power you use over a year match up with your actual usage? 

If you think that the amount they are looking to increase the DD to is too high for your usage, then you can certainly contact them and explain that, and see what they say. Do remember to factor the upcoming price rises into account though when doing the sums! 

bezrez

superkoopauk said:

The 54% is for a dual fuel customer.  At an individual fuel level gas is going up by more than 54% and electricity by less

where does it say its for dual fuel customers? looked at the ofgem site & it shows the unit prices i have given no mention of dual fuel or more if on single fuel tariff. everyone is saying the increase is on the unit prices not overall cost I just cant see how that equates to 54%. 
the only way i can see any where near 54% is if you take the current price cap of £1277 & add 54.4% (approx) which gives the new price cap of £1971.

QrizB

bezrez said:

superkoopauk said:

The 54% is for a dual fuel customer.  At an individual fuel level gas is going up by more than 54% and electricity by less

where does it say its for dual fuel customers? looked at the ofgem site & it shows the unit prices i have given no mention of dual fuel or more if on single fuel tariff. everyone is saying the increase is on the unit prices not overall cost I just cant see how that equates to 54%. 
the only way i can see any where near 54% is if you take the current price cap of £1277 & add 54.4% (approx) which gives the new price cap of £1971.

Yes, that's where the 54% comes from, £1971 is 54% more than £1277.

The details of the cap are explained at the links in my signature.

prowla

wittynamegoeshere said:

Bills are not going up by £700/yr, the maximum capped tariff is going up between April and October, when power usage is much lower.  This probably represents around a quarter of a typical household's annual power bill.

Even this is only if competition does not resume and we don't go back to suppliers competing for customers at prices below the cap, which may happen next week for all anyone knows.

IF tariffs remain this high in a year's time then they've gone up by £700/yr, but this is not a fact until next year.

Everyone on a capped variable tariff is paying the current (pre-rise) price for about another two months until the 1st April, after which time most people will be using much less power for the next six months, until the next price review.  Anyone who has leapt onto a bumped-up fixed tariff as a result of the fear generated by these sort of headlines will currently be paying much more than everyone who's stayed on the capped variable tariff.

It's undoubtedly bad news, but possibly not as bad as the headlines are screaming.

I had a notification of my "Annual Personal Projection" from Shell:

Your current tariff: Flexible 6 Direct Debit ebill  £1,206

Your new tariff:     Flexible 7                     £1,889

Increase in cost:                                     £683 

That's as near to £700 as dammit.

Si1969

Sorry for asking a dumb question...

So my fixed rate tariff ended on 31st January. I've been on my providers website, and they've said that i'm underpaying and recommended that they increase my monthly payment from £105 to £135. 

I'm assuming here that this is before they hit me with another increase in April of 54%, putting my bill up to £208 per month? That would mean that i've had a £103 increase per month which doesn't sound right to me.

QrizB

Si1969 said:

Sorry for asking a dumb question...
So my fixed rate tariff ended on 31st January. I've been on my providers website, and they've said that i'm underpaying and recommended that they increase my monthly payment from £105 to £135.
I'm assuming here that this is before they hit me with another increase in April of 54%, putting my bill up to £208 per month? That would mean that i've had a £103 increase per month which doesn't sound right to me.

Depending on the fixed rate you had before, yes that's quite possible.

Can you tell us your typical annual usage of electricity and (assuming you have it) gas? We can work out your annual bill and monthly equivalent on the current cap and the forhcoming April one.

Si1969

My readings don’t make much sense, well not to me anyway. Don’t see how I can have empty months. Only thing that’s changed in the last year is I had a smart meter fitted about 4 months ago.

Gas

Electric 

QrizB

Si1969 said:

My readings don’t make much sense, well not to me anyway. Don’t see how I can have empty months. Only thing that’s changed in the last year is I had a smart meter fitted about 4 months ago.

You don't have any empty months. When you had your smart meters fitted on the 20th of September they started counting from zero.

Your gas meter was imperial and your new one is metric.

Your electricity meter was dual-rate (E7) and your new one isn't.

And I guess you moved into your property (or at least, started paying the bills) on the 9th of December 2020?

• Your electricity consumption for 14 months is 4022kWh.
• Your gas consumption for 14 months is 20401kWh.

If those were your annual values (they're obviously a bit high):

• On the current cap: £1850/yr, £154/month
• On the new April cap: £2910/yr, £242/month

Allowing for those numbers being a bit high (they include two extra winter months) it seems as though your supplier's new monthly DD of £135 is about right and this might rise to £210/month in April.

Morbeous

I bet all those that listened to Martin saying to stay out and not take a fixed tariff feel pretty stupid now. Energy wholesale prices have rocketed since the invasion of Ukraine and now Martin is backtracking and saying a fixed deal is a good idea. So glad I fixed and paid attention to the rising costs 

Ultrasonic

Morbeous said:

I bet all those that listened to Martin saying to stay out and not take a fixed tariff feel pretty stupid now. Energy wholesale prices have rocketed since the invasion of Ukraine and now Martin is backtracking and saying a fixed deal is a good idea. So glad I fixed and paid attention to the rising costs 

Nobody should feel 'stupid', and nor should Martin Lewis be criticised for not predicting and factoring in Russia invading Ukraine and its consequences.