The price cap and a newly introduced standing charge.

whattochoose

I am an "electricity only" customer of Outfox the Market.
I have received an email from them detailing Ofgem's new price cap amounts from 1st October that I will have to pay.

Since I have been with them my tariff has not included a standing charge.

They now tell me that from the 1st October, I will be paying a standing charge of 43.260p per day.

I expected my energy use tariff to increase, I did not anticipate a newly introduced standing charge.
I'm going to query this with them, but is it something I should have expected?
Thank you.

MattMattMattUK

whattochoose said:

I am an "electricity only" customer of Outfox the Market.
I have received an email from them detailing Ofgem's new price cap amounts from 1st October that I will have to pay.

Since I have been with them my tariff has not included a standing charge.

They now tell me that from the 1st October, I will be paying a standing charge of 43.260p per day.

I expected my energy use tariff to increase, I did not anticipate a newly introduced standing charge.
I'm going to query this with them, but is it something I should have expected?
Thank you.

Yes, you should have expected it and it is pointless to query it with them.

[Deleted User]

It's something that I've expected for quite some time.

The zero standing charge tariff (but slightly higher unit rate) tariff did seem to conflict with the cap - to the point where we have had discussions here about whether OFTM were in breach of the cap.

The cap for standing charge is published - as long as they are below this nothing is wrong.

wild666

I was with them when they had a monthly fee on the electric but not the gas but I left them when they said they were going to do a summer/winter DD and my yearly total was 3 times my yearly usage.

molerat

What is your annual consumption ? If you use in excess of 2900 kWh per year you will be better off on this tariff

whattochoose

MattMattMattUK said:

whattochoose said:

I am an "electricity only" customer of Outfox the Market.
I have received an email from them detailing Ofgem's new price cap amounts from 1st October that I will have to pay.

Since I have been with them my tariff has not included a standing charge.

They now tell me that from the 1st October, I will be paying a standing charge of 43.260p per day.

I expected my energy use tariff to increase, I did not anticipate a newly introduced standing charge.
I'm going to query this with them, but is it something I should have expected?
Thank you.

Yes, you should have expected it and it is pointless to query it with them.

Please tell me what the rationale is for suddenly imposing a standing charge, when the unit rate charge will also be going up, notwithstanding the £400 rebate to be set off against electricity bills from October?

stewie_griffin

What was your unit prices and what is it changing to? What’s your annual usage?

QrizB

whattochoose said:

Please tell me what the rationale is for suddenly imposing a standing charge, when the unit rate charge will also be going up, notwithstanding the £400 rebate to be set off against electricity bills from October?

The Government's Energy Price Guarantee - EPG - for variable rate tariff customers is based on those customers paying a certain price per kWh and a certain daily standing charge.

Outfox have until now been charging you a higher rate for your kWh to compensate for the zero SC.

They can't do this under the terms of the EPG and so they either charge you the SC or they pay it our of their own pockets.

Since you're on a variable tariff, they've decided that you are going to pay it not them.

[Deleted User]

QrizB said:

whattochoose said:

Please tell me what the rationale is for suddenly imposing a standing charge, when the unit rate charge will also be going up, notwithstanding the £400 rebate to be set off against electricity bills from October?

Outfox have until now been charging you a higher rate for your kWh to compensate for the zero SC.

They can't do this under the terms of the EPG and so they either charge you the SC or they pay it our of their own pockets.

And we weren't even sure that they were allowed to do it before (on the old OFGEM caps) either - that's why some of us expected this change.

whattochoose

Were firms like Outfox the Market breaking some cardinal rule by not imposing a standing charge, and henceforth are standing charges a thing of the past?

[Deleted User]

whattochoose said:

Were firms like Outfox the Market breaking some cardinal rule by not imposing a standing charge, and henceforth are standing charges a thing of the past?

No, but they used to cover the cost by putting the unit price up as QrizB pointed out.  What they can't do is put the unit price higher than the cap to cover it.  They still had to pay for all the things that the standing charge usually pays for.

If someone wanted to set the unit price at or below the cap and have no standing charge, they could.  Octopus sort of do this (I think) by having unit price at the cap and standing charge 4% below the cap, but that obviously costs them money to do it.