I wish I hadn't followed Martin's advice not to fix my energy deal

Sea_Shell

pochase said:

Alnat1 said:

Sadly energy saving needs to be planned before we hit winter and the majority of people in this country don't read forums like this. They vaguely hear stuff on the news but it doesn't really sink in how this will affect them.

Add in that some of the big energy companies only bill 6 monthly, many will get an autumn bill showing summer usage and think they are fine. Come next spring, with further rises, a lot of folks are going to be very shocked when they receive the next bill and DD review.

The government should make available some kind of fuel calculator using the predicted SVT on a gov.uk site and advertise (leaflet through every letterbox?) so everyone can easily put in their figures and see what costs could be. Maybe ML could sort one on MSE too (when Oct figures released) and yell about it on telly.

To be able to use a fuel calculator you need to know how much energy you use in the first place.

I would say that 80% of those asking a question here just come in with some amounts, and many of them even after been asked have no idea how much they use, or how to get the information.

If it would be that easy we could just put up one of the spreadsheets some of are using and just update the predictions every few days. I doubt that will work very well.

It brings home that whilst something is "cheap" people don't think about what they use, they just do what they like, and whilst the bills are "small" they pay little, or no, attention to the details.

☹️

They are starting to pay attention now!!


The best time to understand was yesterday, the next best day is today!!

Alnat1

They could use the ones from their last bill if they didn't have more accurate figures. I'm aware they aren't always that good but would at least help.

Mstty

This forum will become quite the sad read of despair with people not being able to afford their energy bills.

pochase

Alnat1 said:

They could use the ones from their last bill if they didn't have more accurate figures. I'm aware they aren't always that good but would at least help.

Hopefully that will work again when they are a year with one supplier, but it seems that many never downloaded bills and have no history they can refer to. So with forced switches they have lost access to their data.

dustydigger

Last year I was paying Scottish Power £91 pm, and was unhappy last September when they increased my payment to £106 pm.,thats £1272 per year,so pretty much on the ''average'' figure,makes working out prices a bit easier.. But I have cut consumption a bit,and I was paying way over the top anyway,and so now have a whopping   £412 in credit. If that was applied to monthly payments I would be paying £34 a month less. SP warned me in April that my fixed rate would end in August,and my new fixed tariff would be £302 per month. Shock horror,but within two weeks it went up to £327 a month,then a gobsmacking £367. Aarrgghh!!.

 So it was a no-brainer decision to follow Martin's advice,as obviously this was no cheap fix!.I will go on to SVR in September.The price cap of course prevents SP charging  above the cap rate,but there doesnt seem to be any regulation of fixed rate costs. A 350% increase seems just a leetle bit much!. Looking at the variable rate ,it would be around £306 a month if I keep up to same consumption. But I was overcharged a year ago anyway,and am now more usage careful.Even if £106pm. was accurate for now,and its obviously not if I have a £412 credit balance,I would still be paying probably £80 a month less on SVR than the   SP fix,and when you add in the credit balance and then the various monetary helps from the govt you see SPs outrageous fix is just ripping off customers. And we cant get out since all the companies are charging the same and asking an eyewatering £300 to leave.The whole thing is outrageous and disgraceful IMO