British Gas "Essential Tariff" discounts for folk on benefits...

elektra

Cardew wrote: »

I understood, but readily admit I may be wrong, that the purpose was to enable pre-pay customers to get the same rates as those paying by Direct Debit.

It is not the intent to provide a discount for those already paying by Direct Debit????

I think that is/was the main reason. It replaced the £30 winter payments. But it can also benefit people like my parents who are on benefits, normal meters and prefer to pay bills on receipt.

have repeated long running problems with BG getting the bills correct which is why I like to see prices clearly displayed.

sinbin_72

My mum got the winter reabte and was moved onto essentials tarrif automatically. I read the letter and thought great...it will be a good thing for her.

However, after questioning the next bill the lady at BG eventually admitted that because my mumwas already on Price Protection..it actually worked out cheaper than essentials. She said that this was the case only in selected regions...my mum is in London.

Just a heads up for those thinking of switching to essentials.

zzzLazyDaisy

I telephoned BG today after receiving a booklet referring to Essentials Tariff. I queried why I had not been moved onto it when my winter fuel rebate payments ceased.

I was told that I WAS moved onto the Essentials Tariff automatically, but that because I was already paying by Direct Debit, I was already on the best rate, so it didn't give me a discount. So in fact my bills went UP due to the loss of the winter rebate, and the 'social energy tariff' in that situation is just smoke and mirrors. I do agree that it is wrong to penalise people on prepayment meters as they are usually the poorest members of society, but I also think it is wrong to give out a message that the elderly and disabled on certain qualifying benefits are being given extra help, when for many that is simply not the case.

As a matter of interest, though. EDF have a social energy tariff which gives a discount of 15% off their standard tariff to people on income support or pension credit.

zzzLazyDaisy

Cardew wrote: »

I understood, but readily admit I may be wrong, that the purpose was to enable pre-pay customers to get the same rates as those paying by Direct Debit.It is not the intent to provide a discount for those already paying by Direct Debit????

Except that the e-mail that BG sent to Electra (see above) clearly states that Direct debit customers are eligible for Essentials Tariff provided they are in receipt of qualifying benefits. That makes no sense if - as I was told this morning - the Essentials Tariff is the same as the discounted DD tariff

elektra

zzzLazyDaisy wrote: »

As a matter of interest, though. EDF have a social energy tariff which gives a discount of 15% off their standard tariff to people on income support or pension credit.

Thanks for that LazyDaisy. I'll have a look at that but not easy to compare when they don't display prices - really want to get away from BG due to their inability to provide proper bills,reading, online access, rates, cust services (for elec, No problem with Gas).

zzzLazyDaisy wrote: »

I do agree that it is wrong to penalise people on prepayment meters as they are usually the poorest members of society, but I also think it is wrong to give out a message that the elderly and disabled on certain qualifying benefits are being given extra help, when for many that is simply not the case .

But in a way they are given extra help. My Mum for instance would not want to move to DD, and also got the £30 winter payements and essential tariff not going up till 'end of winter'. So is a cheaper rate than standard but not necessarily the cheapest at BG or elsewhere.

zzzLazyDaisy

Yes, I do agree that some people are helped, and that any help is a good thing. My beef is that they are claiming that people paying by Direct Debit are eligible for the Essentials social energy tariff, but when you phone to enquire they say Essentials is the same as the normal DD tariff. It is misleading.

However, following up on your post re Energy Choices, I contacted BG and have requested an information pack about their Winter Warmer Package. The qualifying benefits are much more restrictive - pension credit, disability living allowance and attendance allowance only, but for those who do qualify, there is a winter credit of 'up to' £90. I was told the pack will take about a week to arrive so I will post back when I receive it.

missile

Why do BG make it so difficult for you to find out about these schemes?

I phoned up today and was told the essential tarrif rate for DD customers is a 10% reduction on whatever rate you are currently on - click 5 is currently their cheapest rate.

I was told the Winter Warmer applications closed on April 5th.

elektra

Don't know why they can't just tell you the actual rate

British Gas Essential tariff ( as charged from 01/03/08) is as follows

For standard Gas registers, 4.192 pence per kilowatt for the first 12.526 kilowatts used a day, and 2.314 pence per kilowatt for the rest.

excluding vat

Cardew

elektra wrote: »

Don't know why they can't just tell you the actual rate

British Gas Essential tariff ( as charged from 01/03/08) is as follows

For standard Gas registers, 4.192 pence per kilowatt for the first 12.526 kilowatts used a day, and 2.314 pence per kilowatt for the rest.

excluding vat

They don't make it easy to work out which tariff is cheapest do they?

BG Click 5 is 5.905p/kWh but for the first 7.34kWh per day
Then 2,477p/kWh for the rest. all excluding VAT

So, if my arithmetic is correct, for the average consumption of 20,500kWh pa, that works out at £560 on Essentials and £599 on Click 5.

However if you pay by DD on Click 5 you can get a discount of up to £64 a year so that could bring it down to £535.

Do you get DD discount on Essentials??

Certainly it would appear that there are not big savings on either tariff.

SwanJon

Not much to add to the above, but just to confirm.
Prices for gas are as above (not sure why essentials didn't move to 7.34kWh/day).
DD customers can sign up for essentials, and although this won't make much difference to their p/kWh, there are other benefits, such as the delayed price increase to 1 March, and bringing together other things such as the energy trust, & insulation.
If you can get online, an online tariff is cheaper (and the name of the site is ...)