Centrica (BG) calls for Octopus being prevented from new customers

masonic

The term curmudgeon has never seemed more fitting. Judging by the comments in some of the other related articles, this guy is in desperate need of retirement.

Bigphil1474

Swipe said:

You'd have to be mad to join British Gas. I'd rather sign up to Utility Warehouse over them.

I thought that before we moved last year. The house we moved to was on BG tariffs, and when I looked into it, they were the cheapest so we stayed with them. Recently changed to a new fix on gas and electric with them as well. They sorted our smart meters out quickly last year as the house didn't have any. My experience with BG is pretty good tbh. They haven't tried to increase my DD's either.  The test is obviously if/when something goes wrong. 

Swipe

Bigphil1474 said:

Swipe said:

You'd have to be mad to join British Gas. I'd rather sign up to Utility Warehouse over them.

I thought that before we moved last year. The house we moved to was on BG tariffs, and when I looked into it, they were the cheapest so we stayed with them. Recently changed to a new fix on gas and electric with them as well. They sorted our smart meters out quickly last year as the house didn't have any. My experience with BG is pretty good tbh. They haven't tried to increase my DD's either.  The test is obviously if/when something goes wrong. 

Even the worst energy company is OK until something goes wrong.

FreeBear

Swipe said:

Bigphil1474 said:

Swipe said:

You'd have to be mad to join British Gas. I'd rather sign up to Utility Warehouse over them.

I thought that before we moved last year. The house we moved to was on BG tariffs, and when I looked into it, they were the cheapest so we stayed with them. Recently changed to a new fix on gas and electric with them as well. They sorted our smart meters out quickly last year as the house didn't have any. My experience with BG is pretty good tbh. They haven't tried to increase my DD's either.  The test is obviously if/when something goes wrong. 

Even the worst energy company is OK until something goes wrong.

Unless it happens to be Toto Energy (a.k.a. Toto the Clown). They were an incompetent bunch of [redacted] from the beginning. Fortunately, they went out of business before they could do any lasting damage (to me at least).

Still waiting for an accurate final bill from EDF after they were appointed the SoLR. But after nearly 6 years, I don't think I'll be seeing one.

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Tomato Energy (Electric Only Supplier) - Too Good To Be True ?.

debitcardmayhem

System said:

This discussion was created from comments split from: Tomato Energy (Electric Only Supplier) - Too Good To Be True ?.

Huh ??? …..

masonic

debitcardmayhem said:

System said:

This discussion was created from comments split from: Tomato Energy (Electric Only Supplier) - Too Good To Be True ?.

Huh ??? …..

Some discussion related to this in the other thread has been moved into this one.

Scot_39

MattMattMattUK said:

So just a point on this, Ofgem wants suppliers to aim to keep £115 per customer in the bank for financial resilience, for Octopus that is around £850 million and could well be a billion next year, that is a huge amount of money to have to keep sat around being inactive, rather than say being used to buy future deliveries. Rather than forcing suppliers to be in a position where they are able to weather a period of many months of being forced to sell at a loss it would make sense for the regulator to not do that again, which realistically means that the price cap needs to be revised far more frequently. 

But it's relative - and probably also a tiny fraction of their turnover - its less than 10% of the cap - which averages out at £143 per month for instance.

And I wonder how it compares to the at one stage plans to insist on a minimum of 20% of CCBs.  Which would obviously only apply to those on annualised DD plans.

And so also less than Octopus will be holding as a minimum customer credit balance on annualised DD plans at the cap consumption level (5 weeks at end of April iirc their policy from onevdescription on how thry calculate it) let alone the average balance.

But then there will be many who are never in credit, who negatively impact cash flow.

Others on standard credit in similar arrears so at cap tdcv £143 if billed monthly and over £400 at cap levels if billed quarterly.  Who pay a premium for the credit.

And of course those on monthly variable DD will be running that sort of miponthly £143 level permanently in arrears by paying for a month's use approx 2.5-3 weeks after the end of the month.  Who currently benefit, wrongly imo, from the sane rates as annualised plans.
Especially now annual plans are moving zero minimum or even 1m credit minimum basis.

So one obvious way of improving their cash balance quickly is to scrap mvdd - just as iirc Ovo did, and others never allowed it. 
And as EDF have been doing  if Octopus arent there already, bill standard credit customers monthly.

Because otherwise this will be loaded onto everyone's rates or those with annualised plans credit balances and rates to finance.