Standing charge on energy bills

Krakkkers

For those defending the SC can i ask at what level you would start to complain as its £24 a month for me now.

Mstty

Krakkkers said:

For those defending the SC can i ask at what level you would start to complain as its £24 a month for me now.

We pay £15.70 per month SC single fuel which seems reasonable to get the power to our house.

Moaning, this country is great at a moan, some of the best moaners in the world. Complaining...making themselves heard.....not so much. However an armchair moan or moan over the fence to the neighbour count us in.

MattMattMattUK

Krakkkers said:

For those defending the SC can i ask at what level you would start to complain as its £24 a month for me now.

The level where it did not reflect the costs of connection to the grid and other associated costs, be that £2.40, £24 or £100, if it reflects the costs then it is reasonable. 

matt_drummer

Krakkkers said:

For those defending the SC can i ask at what level you would start to complain as its £24 a month for me now.

Whatever is necessary to supply our house with the energy we need to survive.

Its one of life's essentials and has to be paid for from somewhere.

[Deleted User]

Outrage. We consumers are clearly being taken for mugs by our suppliers as this extract from Octopus’ accounts show:

Seriously, any proposal to do away with standing charges would get more traction if an alternative workable solution was put forward to replace the income lost. I have yet to see one.

Chrysalis

MattMattMattUK said:

Chrysalis said:

sandyides said:

Anyone else like me appalled by the escalation of the daily standing charges being applied to energy bills? So even if you don't use any energy at all, you'll still have an increasing bill.
There was a time, not so long ago, when there were no standing charges. Can we revert to that please?
Is it worth a petition?

Already is one with almost 400k signatures, here you go, shame its not on the gov website though, with this many signatures.

https://www.change.org/p/petition-to-reduce-profit-headroom-and-tax-percentages-from-ofgem-price-cap-formula-jacob-rees-mogg-ofgem-jeremy-hunt-adjustpricecap-ofgem

That is an awful petition that is economically illiterate, it would mean capping supplier profit at 0.4%, as a business, with risk factored in, it is not worth running a business at that level, one could get ten times the return on the FTSE 100 which is very low ris, five times that amount by just buying gilts which have zero risk. 

low margins if it really is 0.4%, but in a business where you supplying an essential.  I think the suppliers that are left will be considered too big to fail now, and even the ones that went bust I think the owners did well out of them, one of them was sending money to a consultancy firm with the same shareholders (one way round the profit cap rules).

Bear in mind these companies overall are not on the low margins as they have wealthy parent companies which I know you keep shrugging off as not relevant.

yet these companies continue to be ran, Octopus even purchased Bulb customers, which according to the government was a loss making venture.

British gas as a supplier still made 72 million, which is small compared to centrica, but its not pocket change.

Chrysalis

[Deleted User] said:

Outrage. We consumers are clearly being taken for mugs by our suppliers as this extract from Octopus’ accounts show:

Seriously, any proposal to do away with standing charges would get more traction if an alternative workable solution was put forward to replace the income lost. I have yet to see one.

I just posted my own alternative in the other thread.

Although Octopus are seemingly choosing to lose money on various things right now, they not a typical company.

https://octopus.energy/press/octopus-energy-group-results-for-fy21-22-revenues-up-110-from-20bn-to-42bn-adds-13m-retail-customers-growing-to-34m-globally/

On the flip side you have British Gas a traditional supplier who made 72 million.

Chrysalis

MattMattMattUK said:

Krakkkers said:

For those defending the SC can i ask at what level you would start to complain as its £24 a month for me now.

The level where it did not reflect the costs of connection to the grid and other associated costs, be that £2.40, £24 or £100, if it reflects the costs then it is reasonable. 

Maybe, although we already know there is parts of the SC that are nothing to do with the grid but to cover certain costs for the suppliers.

The true cost as you put it I suspect is much closer to the pre October 2021 SC level before Ofgem started tacking things on to it.

Xbigman

On the flip side you have British Gas a traditional supplier who made 72 million.

BG has about 4 million customers. 72,000,000 divided by 4,000,000 is a profit of about £18 per customer. That looks a pretty !!!!!! poor profit margin to me.


Darren

victor2

Krakkkers said:

For those defending the SC can i ask at what level you would start to complain as its £24 a month for me now.

The level where it is cheaper for me to go off-grid, which my monthly bills fall far short of at the moment.
We have friends who are totally off-grid, and it's not a lifestyle that would suit us. Not yet anyway!