British Gas - £570m Profits Reported

mprice1988

I pretty much agree with BIV'S post above. It makes sense and the breakdown shows its not a lot in terms of massive companies.

BG's profit of £56 million or so two years ago was an absolute joke for a company this size, £500m is more like the profit from the country's leading energy supplier. I work for SSE and our profits last year were around the £1 billion mark if i remember correctly and I suspect other companies profits will be a similar region.

Being a customer service representative I will have trouble explaining to customers how we can justify such profits but I guess that is what business is about.

SwanJon

biv wrote: »

Moral of the thread - if I may?

Look at the complete facts and don't take things by face value - especially when it comes from the media. Compare figures, do calculations, and research a little. It'll help you to to save money and decide who to do business with time and again - all whilst remaining emotionally neutral.

And the probelm with getting information from the media is the selective reporting.
As SSE & Centrica are British companies, they report their earnings here, they get picked up by the British Media looking for a story.
How many people spotted that Ibedrola (Scottish Power) announced their results the day before Centrica?
No, oh, that must be because they're not an easy target for the media.

Mazio_2

mprice1988 wrote: »

I pretty much agree with BIV'S post above. It makes sense and the breakdown shows its not a lot in terms of massive companies.

BG's profit of £56 million or so two years ago was an absolute joke for a company this size, £500m is more like the profit from the country's leading energy supplier. I work for SSE and our profits last year were around the £1 billion mark if i remember correctly and I suspect other companies profits will be a similar region.

Being a customer service representative I will have trouble explaining to customers how we can justify such profits but I guess that is what business is about.

The cost to consumers is not distributed evenly thats the problem . So this year has hit families especially those with young children as the house will be occupied for most of the day no choice really in this day and age of course electricity usage will be higher as well for washing clothes etc. Elderly can get help with fuel costs but it is still hard again most will be in house all day. Its not to bad if you both work and not in the house most of the day with a bit of planning and care you can have a manageable bill even with the price increase.

Also we have had mild winters lately so usage would have been down affecting profits as this year has been harder winter they would have got a bigger profit what ever.

I do agree that it is also up to individuals to also take some blame from wasting energy and its not just BG its all of the power companies and what will they do with the profits reinvest in the services or give 17+% to shareholders and big bonuses to themselves?

Gavioli_UK

biv wrote: »

I think the 570m is scandalous - it's just not enough!

"If BG customers have 16m customers and made £570m profit - it works out to be around £35.00 per customer. Divide that by 52 and it works out at 68p per week."

Don't forget though this 68p per week is only part of the profit made out of you to get the energy to you.

On top of that there are separate companies (and many of these outsource their functions) involved directly in supplying energy and making a profit out of you to:-

Generate or souce the energy
Distribute the energy.
Supply and install the meters.
Collect the data.
Agregate and pass on the data to the supplier.
Bill you.
Collect the debts.
Manage your change of supplier.
Regulate the industry.

So you see only one company, in this case British Gas (BG is a totally separate company) making a profit out of what is a necessity, whereas in fact it is many - I can count 20 in the case of electricity

The point being they all want a high profit out of you, and not just covering their costs and overheads. There is so much profit that I know a guy who works for a meter operator and he reglarly travels from Mansfield to Gloucester each day to install meters - a round trip of 300 miles.

The £1 you pay is diluted so much before it actually pays for the product. This is the area that needs investigating.

space_rider

One of the reasons that BG`s profits are so healthy is because there are many people out there that think you should keep your gas with BG and the electricity with whoever it was before privatisation so will never change and will stay with BG even though by having them as single fuel you are paying way over the odds. I`m amazed at the amount of people that do think this. I got rid of them as soon as I could because of their poor customer service.

stevei_2

Did anyone else hear about the riots caused by the British Gas profit announcement?

alared

Didn`t hear about any riots but their greedy,obscene profits sparked Ofgem into action, at long,long last, to launch an investigation into the whole industry.

Hopefully a £41 million fine,like imposed on Nat.Grid,will result.
That should well and truly dent their gluttonous profits.

It`s not the fact of their profits that are causing the anger, but to rub salt in the wounds, they whack up the price of energy.

pollypans

I have been reading with interest everyone's comments about British Gas and can see arguments from all sides. However, my reason for searching for comments is that this morning I was presented with my BG quarterly account and a notification that my monthly DD payments will increase from £32 to £51 (59%!!!). Price increase of 15% is one thing but how does that justify raising my DD payment by 59%?! I think I'm missing something.Also, on the point of customer service, when I called BG this morning to query my future DD charges I was given a recorded message to say that the service was closed for upgrades to their billing system. Just a coincidence/bad timing on the day that millions of customers might be receiving the same notification?

alared

The increasing of DD is yet another "grab the money scam" that is being used by most energy companies and not just BG.

They pretend they have worked out your estimated usage for the coming year and then whack up your DD according to their guesses.

In effect they are holding thousands of pounds of their customers money and getting all the interest.

chocolatechipcookies

SwanJon wrote: »

British Gas is British, as are Scottish & Southern, and some smaller ones.
E-on & Powergen are German
EDF is French (and majority state owned)
Scottish Power is Spanish.

Doesn't help your arguments if you make up the facts as you go.

So is Scottish Power British or Spanish?