British Gas wants to fix my gas meter that works fine.

Heedtheadvice

I that is a full and accurate copy of the conversation ( even though it seems to be missing the concluding words) I can understand why you feel frustrated as it seems like poor reasoning by BG.

However you cannot just contact the ombudsman to complain. To do so you have to conform to the suppliers complaint procedure ( which they publish, it will be on their web site) which is usually ask them to record a formal complaint. If the supplier then has not given you a satisfactory answer, given you a deadlock letter or 8 weeks from the complaint has passed you can ask the Ombudsman to consider your case. You will need to provide evidence for that. See https://www.energyombudsman.org/our-process.

Your evidence needs to be factual and the supplier needs to provide a factual response. It will not be a quick process and involves work on you behalf.

If it is their customer service you complain about it is probably easier to just move to a supplier with better customer care.

If it is just your reluctance to accept meter changes then change suppliers will not prevent a supplier withing to change them. Is it is a SMETS1 meter ( even if it is fairly new ) it will need changing eventually anyway - whatever you think of it's performance. There may be other meter issues you are not aware of as posted in this thread.

I still do not know why you are resisting new meters and that would be the easiest and simplest way to bring the matter totally to an end.

hareng

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81859823#Comment_81859823

Not all of us are gullible, .
Its costing a damn site more than 7p why is it you lot fail to work in battery life and depreciation -Case dismissed.

SimonSeys

https://www.fogstar.co.uk/products/fogstar-energy-16kwh-48v-solar-battery

I’ve fot one of these. Cut my electricity bill by 75%. It will pay for itself quite quickly.

debitcardmayhem

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81864014#Comment_81864014

Hmmm , if he didn’t have a smart meter his cost would be more like 25p , the depreciation would be the same. Overruled….,the jury should discount the last statement.

QrizB

This is very much off-topic, but let me dissect it for our shared benefit.

Not all of us are gullible.

True, but I don't think you're making the point that you think you are.

Its costing a damn site more than 7p

I'm happy to accept that born_again's electricity is costing 7p/kWh. Most of mine does too.

why is it you lot fail to work in battery life

Battery life on an EV is something like 5000-8000 cycles. With a smaller EV battery being about 40 kWh, at the lower end of that range you're looking at passing 80,000 kWh through the battery. 80,000 kWh will take a typical EV 240,000 miles.

How many UK cars ever reach 240,000 miles? Noe of mine ever have, nor my wife's, my parents', my sister's etc.

and depreciation

Kia don't offer an e-Niro any more but let's compare the Niro to the EV4.

The base-model Niro is £30845 on the road, while the base-model EV4 is £34745 on the road ignoring the EV grant.

That's an extra £3900 for the EV4.

Let's asume that over the entire life of the car, they each travel 100,000 miles (160,000 km). The Niro is WLTP assessed at 4.7 litres per 100km combined, so over 160,000 km it will burn 7520 litres of petrol. At £1.30 per litre that'll cost you £9776. In essence by buying a petrol Niro you're committing yourself and any future car owners to spending almost £10k on fuel over the life of the vehicle.

The EV4, by comparison, is WLTP rated with a range of 273 miles on a 58.3kWh battery pack. That's 4.7 miles per kWh. Let's assume that's on the optimistic side and instead assess 3 miles per kWh. Driving 100,000 miles will therefore need 33,333 kWh of electricity which, at 7p/kWh, will cost £2333.

(If we'd assessed at 4.7 miles per kWh, it would have been 21,280 kWh costing £1490.)

£9776 - £2333 = £7443. Less the extra £3900 purchase cost means that the whole-life cost of the EV4 is £3543 less than the cost of the petrol Niro.

If the car lasts longer than 100000 mies (and, with a 58.3kWh battery pack, 5000 cycles would take it almost three times that far) you'll be saving even more on fuel.

And all this is without factoring in eg. servicing, which is generally much cheaper on an EV, and reliability, an EV having far fewer moving parts.

Case dismissed

EVs are a similar price to buy and much cheaper to run. Case dismissed indeed.

WiserMiser

You've forgotten the huge pothole that's around the corner. When the 3p/mile e-VED kicks in, the marginal cost of driving those 100,000 miles will increase by a whopping £3,000. The e-VED charge will also rise in line with inflation. ☹️

Expect to see a big slump in EV sales !

EVs are also likely to cost more to insure.

QrizB

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81864087#Comment_81864087

And you've forgotten that the fuel duty escalator is coming back.

tim_p

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81864087#Comment_81864087

Will that inflation rise be RPI or CPI, or will they maybe change it further down the line?

WiserMiser

Fuel duty on an ICE works out at about 6p per mile. Agreed, the fuel duty escalator (if actually implemented) would see this figure slightly increased.

However, ICE users wouldn't see anything like the overnight hit that EVs will face.

Adding the equivalent of e-VED to petrol would bring it up to 9p per mile, a 50% rise which would correspond to fuel duty jumping from 52.95p per litre to 79.425p (equivalent pump price around 157p per litre in today's prices). That's not going to happen overnight.

WiserMiser

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81864110#Comment_81864110

e-VED will be linked to the Consumer Prices Index (CPI).