Fixed price tariff vs price cap

Boris_Blank

PennineAcute said:

What were the figures you used in the comparison site?

£2520 for a three bed semi at those rates is a lot of usage.

Indeed, I'm in a 4 bed bungalow, have heaps of computers, TV's, etc, two living rooms that are constantly in use and burn electricity like a nutter and have had a lot of cold spells so the gas heating has been on a lot and my usage is more or less the same as ClaireH79 for a two week period.

ClaireH79

Boris_Blank said:

Ok, but your bill does not show any credits, is the £166 a month actually being received by Scottish Power??

 Yes but we pay at the end of each month.  That bill was produced because I'd submitted readings again.  It won't let me download anything for the whole 4 months worth

Boris_Blank

Ok, thanks for posting that, I thought that the payments were missing which might have been the problem.

Your energy usage is very high, on a par with mine and I am quite wasteful, my other half works from home and its a large detached bungalow.  

Do you know your annual usage and what are the figures?    Did you use these figures on the comparison site?

Boris_Blank

Mine are in the region of Electricity 5100 per annum, Gas 28000.

Boris_Blank

Oh, and I was paying £170 a month until yesterday, new tariff now along with a big increase!

ClaireH79

Boris_Blank said:

Ok, thanks for posting that, I thought that the payments were missing which might have been the problem.

Your energy usage is very high, on a par with mine and I am quite wasteful, my other half works from home and its a large detached bungalow.  

Do you know your annual usage and what are the figures?    Did you use these figures on the comparison site?

My husband said he used the annual usage figures we had from shell when he did the comparison.  It just felt like they'd estimated a reasonable direct debit amount so we'd agreed to sign up then say its not enough 🤷‍♂️. We've lowered our usage which we proved to Scottish power.  After 3 hours on a call to them they finally said we're charging a lot more then shell which is fair enough but we would've appreciated a more realistic direct debit estimate.  Doesn't feel very transparent...

QrizB

ClaireH79 said:

My husband said he used the annual usage figures we had from shell when he did the comparison.

Have you managed to find those figures? Can you share them with us?

PennineAcute

ClaireH79 said:

Boris_Blank said:

Ok, thanks for posting that, I thought that the payments were missing which might have been the problem.

Your energy usage is very high, on a par with mine and I am quite wasteful, my other half works from home and its a large detached bungalow.  

Do you know your annual usage and what are the figures?    Did you use these figures on the comparison site?

My husband said he used the annual usage figures we had from shell when he did the comparison.  It just felt like they'd estimated a reasonable direct debit amount so we'd agreed to sign up then say its not enough 🤷‍♂️. We've lowered our usage which we proved to Scottish power.  After 3 hours on a call to them they finally said we're charging a lot more then shell which is fair enough but we would've appreciated a more realistic direct debit estimate.  Doesn't feel very transparent...

Perhaps, and a wild assumption, the figures from Shell were way out.

QrizB

PennineAcute said:

ClaireH79 said:

My husband said he used the annual usage figures we had from shell when he did the comparison.  It just felt like they'd estimated a reasonable direct debit amount so we'd agreed to sign up then say its not enough 🤷‍♂️. We've lowered our usage which we proved to Scottish power.  After 3 hours on a call to them they finally said we're charging a lot more then shell which is fair enough but we would've appreciated a more realistic direct debit estimate.  Doesn't feel very transparent...

Perhaps, and a wild assumption, the figures from Shell were way out.

The GIGO rule at work?

Boris_Blank

No. it doesn't.   If the usage figures were roughly the same as mine then the direct debit estimate was way too low.

I did a quick calculation using my usage figures above and using your energy unit/standing charge figures, my direct debit would have been £252 per month.   To put that into perspective, about 7 months ago I was paying about £120 a month then Hub went bust and with a new deal with Eon-Next I found my new DD was £170.   Today that has just today jumped to £277 with the new fixed rate deal.

I'm not sure what you can do now.  If your energy consumption figures were accurate and the energy prices are correct I doubt you'd get anywhere by complaining about the low DD estimate.  The shock of DD amounts basically doubling in the past 14 months is just how it is now - I think you will have avoided a couple of large-ish increases by having a good deal with Shell at the right time only to be eventuallyhit by those increased prices in your current deal.  I'm in the same position as are many others.

My only advice would be to be very sure of your usage figures and calculate the costs using  the figures shown by any potential new supplier before committing to them and be sure that your calculation roughly matches what you are seeing on screen when selecting a supplier. 

If you are any good with spreadsheets you can easily calculate the figures in seconds and re-jig as necessary. It'll worth it for avoiding surprises and peace of mind.