One Utilities

Babybearcats

Moved into my new flat middle of June this year, didn't find out till after signing contract it was top up meters! Letting agents recommend One Utilities for gas/electric/water etc as a one off payment every month. I thought that's good paying for unlimited gas/electric and water, seen as the flat has under floor heating and a tonne of big spot lights and thinking this would be expensive to run. So I signed up to £245 a month to cover unlimited gas/electric/water and TV license. The unlimited cap for the energy is £2400 per year, which is higher than it should be, (£2074) also when prices dropped in July they refused to put my payments down! They have just emailed me to say that my payments will go down by £6.86 month from October! this is still going to be well over the price cap announced for October.(£1923) The second issue with this company is that I am still waiting for a meter exchange, they keep making appointments then telling me they are cancelled, 4 in total now, the last appointment 8/8/23 they just didn't turn up, (AES meters) half an hour on hold to talk to someone to be told my appointment had been cancelled and re-booked for 11/9/23!! In the meantime I am paying to top up my meters and having to send the receipts to One Utilities to pay me back, which I have to chase up every time and then have to wait days for the money to go back into my account! One utilities, Rebel Energy and AES Meters are the worse companies I have every come across. If the meter exchange is cancelled again in September it will be another month without been able to put the heating on! Has anyone else had dealings with these companies! I'm exhausted with it all now, I feel like I'm just banging my head against a brick wall and getting nowhere!  sorry for the long rant x

la531983

Your main issue here is you have totally misunderstood how the price cap works. 

The "price cap" is a notional cap based on the average user (2,900kWh of electricity, 12,000kWh of gas). If you use more, you pay more. If you use less, you pay less.

I highly doubt you were quoted £245 for UNLIMITED use of utilities, I am afraid. You were quoted that based on an estimate of what you were likely to use over a 12 month period.

MattMattMattUK

Babybearcats said:

Moved into my new flat middle of June this year, didn't find out till after signing contract it was top up meters! Letting agents recommend One Utilities for gas/electric/water etc as a one off payment every month. I thought that's good paying for unlimited gas/electric and water, seen as the flat has under floor heating and a tonne of big spot lights and thinking this would be expensive to run. So I signed up to £245 a month to cover unlimited gas/electric/water and TV license.

This was your first mistake, your energy and water usage is not unlimited.

Babybearcats said:

The unlimited cap for the energy is £2400 per year, which is higher than it should be, (£2074) also when prices dropped in July they refused to put my payments down! They have just emailed me to say that my payments will go down by £6.86 month from October! this is still going to be well over the price cap announced for October.(£1923) 

That is not how the energy "price cap" works, the price cap is a cap on unit rates, not on the total bill, the figures used are a "typical home", but not reflective of most people's situations, just the mean average, if you use more you pay more.

Babybearcats said:

The second issue with this company is that I am still waiting for a meter exchange, they keep making appointments then telling me they are cancelled, 4 in total now, the last appointment 8/8/23 they just didn't turn up, (AES meters) half an hour on hold to talk to someone to be told my appointment had been cancelled and re-booked for 11/9/23!!

If they miss an appointment you are entitled to £30, however not of they reschedule, it is the third party meter installers that all suppliers are required to use, they do not fit the meters themselves.

Babybearcats said:

In the meantime I am paying to top up my meters and having to send the receipts to One Utilities to pay me back, which I have to chase up every time and then have to wait days for the money to go back into my account!

I am not really surprised it takes "days", things have to be processed, approved and reconciled, then paid. 

Babybearcats said:

One utilities, Rebel Energy and AES Meters are the worse companies I have every come across. If the meter exchange is cancelled again in September it will be another month without been able to put the heating on!

When you say "another month without been able to put the heating on!", are you saying you are running your heating in summer? That is going to dramatically increase your energy costs and in almost all circumstances would be unneeded. 

Babybearcats said:

Has anyone else had dealings with these companies! I'm exhausted with it all now, I feel like I'm just banging my head against a brick wall and getting nowhere!  sorry for the long rant x

Others will have had dealings with these companies, but that is irrelevant, the point is you need to try and improve your situation.

How long are you signed up with One Utilities for? It will be cheaper and likely easier to pay your energy and water bills and TV license yourself. With regard to the meters they will get changed, but there could be issues having them changed over regardless, as it is down to the local fitters, but you would only be topping them up yourself, not waiting for some third party to reimburse you, before paying them again by Direct Debit.

[Deleted User]

it is the third party meter installers that all suppliers are required to use, they do not fit the meters themselves.

I know for a fact that Octopus has its own smart meter installers that operate in some regions of the country. An Octopus engineer came out to re-boot my comms hub earlier this year:

https://octopus.energy/services/meet-the-team/

Suppliers are not required to use third-parties - but many do though choice.

Babybearcats

la531983 said:

Your main issue here is you have totally misunderstood how the price cap works. 

The "price cap" is a notional cap based on the average user (2,900kWh of electricity, 12,000kWh of gas). If you use more, you pay more. If you use less, you pay less.

I highly doubt you were quoted £245 for UNLIMITED use of utilities, I am afraid. You were quoted that based on an estimate of what you were likely to use over a 12 month period.

I do understand how the price cap works, the company is charging me more than what Ofgem have set the cap at,  which surly they can't do!  And I actually pay £245 a month for unlimited gas/water and electric, so regardless of how much I use I still pay this much!

la531983

Babybearcats said:

la531983 said:

Your main issue here is you have totally misunderstood how the price cap works. 

The "price cap" is a notional cap based on the average user (2,900kWh of electricity, 12,000kWh of gas). If you use more, you pay more. If you use less, you pay less.

I highly doubt you were quoted £245 for UNLIMITED use of utilities, I am afraid. You were quoted that based on an estimate of what you were likely to use over a 12 month period.

I do understand how the price cap works, the company is charging me more than what Ofgem have set the cap at,  which surly they can't do!  

You contradict the first seven words above with the rest of your statement, sorry to be blunt but you clearly have no understanding of how it works, myself and MattmattMatt have explained it to you above.  I suggest you re-read those posts and maybe look around the internet for fuller explanations.

On the offchance you are actually getting "unlimited", you cant really complain you are being charged more than the AVERAGE user.

MattMattMattUK

Babybearcats said:

la531983 said:

Your main issue here is you have totally misunderstood how the price cap works. 

The "price cap" is a notional cap based on the average user (2,900kWh of electricity, 12,000kWh of gas). If you use more, you pay more. If you use less, you pay less.

I highly doubt you were quoted £245 for UNLIMITED use of utilities, I am afraid. You were quoted that based on an estimate of what you were likely to use over a 12 month period.

I do understand how the price cap works, the company is charging me more than what Ofgem have set the cap at,  which surly they can't do!

Are you sure you do? The "price cap" is a cap on the amount that can be charged per kWh of energy used and on the daily standing charge, it is not a cap on the total cost of your bill, based on consumption.

Babybearcats said:
And I actually pay £245 a month for unlimited gas/water and electric, so regardless of how much I use I still pay this much!

I have gone back and looked again and they do indeed offer an "eat as much as you can" option for energy, that being said it appears to be about twice what any normal usage would actually cost. However, on that basis the price cap does not apply at all. 

Gerry1

You've been monetised.  They pay the lettings agent a commission when you sign up.

All very nice for them but not necessarily for you.

MattMattMattUK

As an example, their quote for "Unlimited" usage would cost me £259.05 pcm for energy, water and TV license. My current bills for energy and water, averaged over a whole year are £121 pcm, I do not have a TV license because I do not watch live TV, but if I did that would cost an additional £13.25 pcm. My total cost is less than half of their "unlimited" tariff, Short of having the heating on all winter with the windows open, and air conditioning running all summer, I am not sure how I could get close to their costs whilst paying the bills direct. 

Babybearcats

MattMattMattUK said:

As an example, their quote for "Unlimited" usage would cost me £259.05 pcm for energy, water and TV license. My current bills for energy and water, averaged over a whole year are £121 pcm, I do not have a TV license because I do not watch live TV, but if I did that would cost an additional £13.25 pcm. My total cost is less than half of their "unlimited" tariff, Short of having the heating on all winter with the windows open, and air conditioning running all summer, I am not sure how I could get close to their costs whilst paying the bills direct. 

I work from home, I live in the north, the flat is cold now so its going to be really cold during winter so the hating will be on full time, also the running costs of cooking, drying clothes etc etc will mount up, hence going for the unlimited option so no unexpected high bills to pay over the winter!

la531983

Babybearcats said:

MattMattMattUK said:

As an example, their quote for "Unlimited" usage would cost me £259.05 pcm for energy, water and TV license. My current bills for energy and water, averaged over a whole year are £121 pcm, I do not have a TV license because I do not watch live TV, but if I did that would cost an additional £13.25 pcm. My total cost is less than half of their "unlimited" tariff, Short of having the heating on all winter with the windows open, and air conditioning running all summer, I am not sure how I could get close to their costs whilst paying the bills direct. 

I work from home, I live in the north, the flat is cold now so its going to be really cold during winter so the hating will be on full time, also the running costs of cooking, drying clothes etc etc will mount up, hence going for the unlimited option so no unexpected high bills to pay over the winter!

Might be even higher than paying the going rate....