General Chat

Well, I'm back and I've done a WHICH comparison check. The company I am with is offering the best so I shall do another check then make up my mind.

I know that I have used less than they originally thought I would - they gave me just over £100 in summer 2021 and in January this year I was £190 in credit. If I end up staying with them I shall alter my monthly - but not to the amount that they suggest.

Our regional tv had a piece about how a village had banded together to get a better deal with their oil. Can’t remember how much it was but possibly well over £. I do remember them saying the company won’t give them a price when they order as by the time it is delivered it will have gone up.

In my last house I had oil central heating but the shower was electric. In lockdown the price of Kerosene went right down to something like 31p per litre!. But now I am in an all electric house with no oil ,I am better off. I was paying then £100 a month for oil and it was 50p last year a litre. I struggled then and quite often had dressing gown on over my clothes and slept with it on when it was sooo cold.

That was a private rental and the house was built in mid 80's and badly needed up grading etc.

You could work out electric V oil and see what the difference is, however its the heating that the oil is used for. Unless one had the finances to consider a different heating system like I have. Underfloor, pumps water not oil so Eco friendly.

You would have the initial cost of installing it but in the long run I think it would pay.

I am so glad, I don't have oil anymore, I simply could not afford it.

Florence in the hebrides

Hi JL
I don’t always watch that programme unless I am aware of something big happening. It was interesting that at one point he didn’t really know what to advise.

I think the cost of oil is down to supply and demand and some of those demanding can offer more money.

We are so grateful that we had to leave our old oil fuelled house and now have both gas and electric.

Thanks Names. I’ve taken a quick look for now.

We were on a fixed rate until end of Jan 2021. We were on a variable rate, paying the same amount for the following year and we’d paid the same in February this year when we decided to check fixed and variable rates again after discovering we were £190 in credit. If only I’d fixed the rate early-to mid- February instead of waiting until late-Feb, before our March payment was due! My bad luck for waiting until the last moment. (I have always paid bills just before they’re due - it’s a habit to hold onto my money as long as possible!)

The Ukrainian invasion had just begun and the company wanted to fix the rate at just over three times our previous monthly payment which was still much more than the 70% the firm is asking us to pay now!

I shall, of course, look around but most fixed rates offered will err on the side of companies’ profit - after all they’re in business to squeeze out every last penny they can. It would be good to fix the rate no higher than what we are being asked to pay now but, being the suspicious type, it would not surprise me if other energy firms wanted to fix it even higher.

People, niggling away in the back of my mind is the fact that meter readings may be available to all energy companies so the ending of a low fixed rate could result in a massive increase in the next fixed rate.

Since we only get between 5 and 7% of our oil supply from Russia, other nations are obviously charging huge amounts for supply of oil - making hay while the sun shines for them but that’s business.

As far as gas is concerned we ourselves produce roughly 50%, the rest coming mainly from Europe (Norway mostly) and about 9% as liquid gas coming mostly from Qatar.

All-in-all, as with most businesses, energy companies are not in the market to run at a loss. It won’t stop me looking around though.

Heating Oil has gone up in price in the past 2 weeks.
We topped up out tank 2 weeks ago at a cost of 59p per litre, our daughter topped her tank up this week at a cost of 90pence per litre, & depending on which oil company one uses here some are charging well over a £ per litre, the price is going UP on a daily basis!

Our daughters bill came in at just short of a £1000, & the tank isn't full, & that's only 1 fill, we both need at least 2 fills per year, it's frightening, & VERY worrying, then there is the extra we have to find for our electricty!
No gas for us living in a rural area!!!

Joan.

JL
It might be worth looking at the last Martin Lewis money show on iplayer.

He reckoned that we would get the same rise as we now have again in October.
His chart of the oil price rises was frightening.

Well, we have our energy email now. I expected our increase to be around the same as Belle’s (£75 pm) and we have been informed that our increase will be £101 pm which works out around an increase of around 70%.

I suspect the company is hedging its bets and gambling on bills rising by 70% by March 2023 but as it has more money in its coffers than we have, and considering we had overpaid by £190 in January, I shall not be altering our DD by 70%; likely it will be 50% - and we won’t have the heating on for as long as we do at the moment.

I shall also look around for better deals - but I suspect they will all be much of a muchness and any firm that offers us a very low monthly payment at the moment will present us with a hefty bill by the end of the year.

Hubby does not seem overly concerned but he is the one who wanted to ‘stay in this house until he drops,’ as he put it when I tried to persuade him to look for a nearby two/three bedroomed bungalow in 2010!

It's detached so exposed on all four sides, five bedrooms with us and our semi-disabled daughter with gas wet central heating.
Half of it is a 1990 extension with hopefully decent insulation but the older part is c. 1955 with cavity walls but no filling so that is something to look at.
The loft is insulated and boarded and the windows are double glazed with external shutters.
We do tend to keep the radiators on in all the rooms so will turn those down or off when not in use.
I suspect that most of the electricity goes on cooking, washing clothes and showers.
Must teach the dog to shut the back door when he lets himself in.

Oh my Brian!! That's nearly £80 per week. What kind of heating do you have? Is it a large house because that's a very large bill.

Florence in the hebrides

Just got the notice of increase due to the raising of the price cap and the annual dual fuel estimate is about £4,100.
Not long ago the annual cost was about £1,800.
Shame my pension increase will be nowhere near £150 a month.

We've just moved into a house with solar panels and the theory is that we get paid for any electricity which we feed back into the grid. Unfortunately we do not have a battery storage system so our panels only produce direct power power, but we are not big power users anyway.

The gas is by Direct debit taken monthly from our account with the amount being adjusted after each reading of the meter

Maddie, try the Energy Ombudsman,.

You could give your supplier notice of your intention and ask whether he'd like to read the meter again and check whether anyone has tapped into your supply.

Unless you have been paying a ridiculously small amount (say £10 per month), I don't see how you can now owe £1981 without something or someone going wrong somewhere.

just the one

I have just been looking at the avergae elctricity usage on various sites and the average for a flat seems to be no more than 3000KWH. (if I've read it right).

I wonder if something went wrong when your new boiler was put in. Or are you paying for other flats as well?

thank you didnt know about the vunerable register
heating cost should have gone down as ci has a new biler fitted oct 2020

Surely an estimate is just that. A guess at how much they think you have used. Now you appear to have had the meter read twice. So why didn’t they chase you after the September reading.

Have your circumstances changed so that you now need much more heating than you used to and have you asked them to add you to the over 65 list? If you now need that extra heating you need to make sure you are their vulnerable register.

both estimates
but if it is 2021 they must have their estimate wrong so how can i accept what they say without some proof

Was the December 2021 an estimate or was it read by the meter person?

well my saga still goes on, no explaination
this what i got

I am so sorry for the delay in sending this email. The reason for the elec deficit of over £1000 is because of what the elec meter reader gave us on the 15th of Feb of 42330. Last read we got on 30th of Sept was 39202. Which means that we have underestimated your usage and this is a catch up bill between those dates.

We are aware that you are ona budget plan, so your budget plan went up to £345+ per month. If you are questioning about the usage, I have sent a link to you about energy efficiency advice about electricity appliances. https://uw.co.uk/legal/energy-information/efficiency-advice

what year are they talking about
checked december bills
estimate december 2020 - 27684
december 2021 - 31012
neither are near the last reading of 39202 in september

still waiting for their calculations

sent another e-mail today but i wonder if the person dealing with this has any more idea than i have as to how these figurews are reached