Petition to regulate energy price rises

icefall

sav_c wrote: »

Hi All,

It's taken a while but I've just had my petition to regulate energy price rises approved on the Prime Minister's petitions website. It would be really appreciated if you would take a minute to sign it and maybe someone in the government might actually listen.

Please forward the link to your friends and family.

Martin, I hope you don't mind me posting this. I strongly believe the energy companies are exploiting the market and taking us for a ride.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/energypricerise/

Thank you for your support.

I signed, thanks for your effort

agree with the below wording you chose for the petition - its very true, the elec and gas companies never fail to pass on a rise, but are slow to or never pass on a cut - slippery companies or what eh!

Then there is the fact that Europeans pay less for their gas and elec... looks very fishy to me....


The energy form nPower has this week increased electricity prices by 12.7% and gas prices by 17.2%. This is despite current wholesale prices being lower than 2 years ago, while prices charged to consumers are already more than 60% higher than they were in the same time frame.
Energy companies have failed to cut prices when their costs have dropped but never failed to pass on increases. It is apparent the free market does not work with respect to domestic energy prices and we contend that the government needs to regulate prices. Price competition in the domestic energy market is limited since all providers follow the leader on each price move.

SwanJon

icefall wrote: »

Then there is the fact that Europeans pay less for their gas and elec... looks very fishy to me....

Happy to be proved wrong, but I was under the impression that the consumer on the continent {No matter how I spell that is doesn't look right} paid more and now we are catching up.
There is the whole gas/storage pipe issue though

The energy form nPower has this week increased electricity prices by 12.7% and gas prices by 17.2%. This is despite current wholesale prices being lower than 2 years ago, while prices charged to consumers are already more than 60% higher than they were in the same time frame.

I'd be interested to see the numbers that back this up. Wholesale prices have been rising for the past 8 months or so.

Energy companies have failed to cut prices when their costs have dropped but never failed to pass on increases.

All suppliers (pretty much) cut their prices last year - hardly a failure.

icefall

SwanJon wrote: »

Happy to be proved wrong, but I was under the impression that the consumer on the continent {No matter how I spell that is doesn't look right} paid more and now we are catching up.
There is the whole gas/storage pipe issue though

I'd be interested to see the numbers that back this up. Wholesale prices have been rising for the past 8 months or so.

All suppliers (pretty much) cut their prices last year - hardly a failure.

I posted on another thread about the points raised above - post here...

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=8031267&postcount=50

article here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/jan/19/householdbills.consumeraffairs

another extract here...

On Tuesday rival EDF claimed wholesale gas prices had risen by 117% when it raised its gas prices by almost 13%. Two weeks ago npower argued they had risen by 66% as it put 19% on gas prices.
The industry regulator, Ofgem, this week contradicted all three claims, saying one-year forward wholesale gas prices had in fact risen by 31% over the same period. The correct figure for electricity was 40%, it said. In the last three weeks oil and wholesale gas prices have been falling.
"I'm sick and tired of hearing energy companies try to justify the latest bout of pain they are inflicting on their customers," said Allan Asher, chief executive of consumer body Energywatch. "This increase piles on even more agony for consumers - particularly those on lower incomes. It is obvious to anyone who looks at it, this market is not delivering good value to consumers.

SwanJon

TheGuardian wrote:

They say in other European countries recent price rises have been substantially less than the 15%-plus increases heaped on UK consumers - evidence that the UK market is not working. In Germany some bills have been falling, while in France gas prices have risen by 4%.

This just says that their rises are less than ours - as I said we are catching up. Nothing about absolute prices.

TheGuardian wrote:

The industry regulator, Ofgem, this week contradicted all three claims, saying one-year forward wholesale gas prices had in fact risen by 31% over the same period. The correct figure for electricity was 40%, it said.

So, the wholesale prices are higher.

I'm just as much a consumer of these services as anyone else on these boards, just don't think we can do much to alter prices of a worldwide commodity, only reduce how much we use.

Cardew

icefall wrote: »

Then there is the fact that Europeans pay less for their gas and elec...

Would you care to elaborate on that statement please e.g. examples of prices

kat21

I think we should be asking whom has a vested interest in the energy companies that post here? we all know we are being ripped off, all the suppiers are from outside the UK , thats why the french and others want to keep their energy supplys nationised. we seem to have pretty little wind mills and no hurry to provide our own fuel supplys. Blair did a deal a few years back by creating an open market the idea was that other eu countrys would follow, sadly due to protests in the other eu countrys this didnt happen meaning our country is ripe for the picking, many mps know this
kat
so come on whos in the share holding business here?

Terrylw1

Hi Kat,

I can tell you I have no interest, no shares and no allegiance to any of them.

If you read through a lot of the threads it's easy to spot who works for utilities however you rarely see anyone plug who they work for.

At the end of the day, company directors might act like that but how many people working for a utility actually want to line the pockets of their bosses? It's worse not getting a payrise when the directors award themselves lots.

Of course, I could mention 1 utility that headhunts employees from the regulation side of the industry...but I won't.

Mazio_2

Just listened to radio 5 with uswitch and another similar company stating that the rises are not representative of the increase in wholesale prices just a way of getting larger profits did not hear it all though. We will see if the pressure starts to increase and bad press do something (hopefully in the consumers interest) for a change.

littlefish2008

Signed. Thank you sav_c

SwanJon

kat21 wrote: »

We all know we are being ripped off, all the suppiers are from outside the UK

Except for Scottish & Southern (aka Hydro, Southern & Swalec) and Centrica (aka British Gas & Scottish Gas)

Not sure if this is what you were after, but I do work for British Gas, but not got any shares. TBH I think pension funds hold the most shares.

Mazio - the two things are not neccessarily mutually exclusive. By law the company has to make money for its shareholders, and we were told that British Gas' operating margin had dropped to below 1%, so to continue to make a profit they had to increase prices. As icefall pointed out, the prices have risen by 30-40%.

Best way round it is to look for the best deal for you (everyone's different), and then look to be more efficient.