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Welcome to the world of the Vincent D'Onofrio obsessed - and a bit of real life thrown in.


Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Power to my elbow

Every year I have the same problem with my energy supplier. They say I owe them money and must increase my monthly payment. They then try to gouge me for far too much. I phone up, I complain that I think my gas meter is running fast, they have a look and say it looks OK, I negotiate them down to a reasonable increase.

Not this year. I pay £44 a month for gas and electricity, the bulk of it for gas. I owed £214.94 "overage" for the year. They wanted to increase my payments to £79 - almost double. The clever woman on the phone infomed me that prices had gone up. Had they doubled? I asked. I knew the answer was no. If I paid off the amount due, then I could increase my payment to only £65 a month. That's almost 50% more, I said. Have prices gone up by 50%? It's only 12-and-a-half percent, she said. ????? Then, despite my assuring her that I only had a combi boiler running on gas, she informed me that my usage may have increased. In a mild winter when I was having hot flushes left right and centre? I don't think so. I gave her a chance to treat me as if I had a brain, or I would switch suppliers. She remained silent. I hung up and phoned another supplier. I switched on the spot. I'll be paying £50 a month with a chance to review it in 6 months. I know it will have to go up, but at least they listened to me and didn't try to blind me with false statistics on a day when I had been teaching MATHS!

11 comments:

BobbyG said...

Way to go, Val. Give 'em hell. I am about to do battle with my phone company, so I feel your pain.

Anonymous said...

The way things are going with fuel prices, it will soon be only the VERY rich who can afford to keep warm or move about, while the rest of us are on horseback and throwing cow dung on our open fires....

Eliza said...

You give em hell Val!!! At the moment we're happy with our energy supplier,but that could well change soon....I shall hope for some of your strength when it comes to dealing with them...I may borrow some of it when I deal with Tiscali too :-D

Anonymous said...

I'm with British Gas and I actually got my gas and electric bills in today; I must admit I didn't know what I was paying, so I checked. I pay £27 p.m. for gas and £39 p.m. for electric and I'm mostly in credit and on a price protection plan until 2010, although I've just noticed that my meter was removed at the end of March... I don't recall being advised of that and my kilowatt hours used has rocketed since... mind, I did have all the family staying here.

British Gas adjusted my payments themselves and advised me of any changes until we got it practically right

I dread to think how much more it's all gonna be after April 2010

JoJo said...

You mean to tell me that you have a choice of who provides your power in the UK?

Here, you get what you get. I'm on Puget Sound Energy, but people in Tacoma are on Tacoma Power; Seattle has Seattle City Light. All of California is Pacific Gas & Electric. We are completely at the mercy of these companies.

jazzy said...

ha, for electricity i have to pay monthly 400€ = 330GBP = 650USD
and sadly my energy supply's calculation is correct!

SnarkAngel said...

Yes, Jojo, those of us here in the states don't have choices of suppliers. However, we do have a very active and influential organization here in Illinois called the Citizens Utility Board. They at least hold the politicians and regulators accountable for the behavior of our gas and electric companies.

Mariajosé said...

In Spain all the electrical companies have the same tariffs. The companies have distributed the zones. The National Commission of Energy has announced that in Julio a 20% will raise to the tariffs. He is 2ª raised east year. Also they have announced the suppression of the nocturnal tariffs.

Regina Caschetto said...

Yes here in the U.S., you have to use the electrical and gas supplier that is in your area-and what really gets me is when the bill is broken down there are a whole list of charges attached to the bill-this tax, that tax, charge for every little thing which really adds up-Whoopi Goldberg was venting about this on The View recently-guess it's pretty much the same all over the world-
Regi.

JoJo said...

Puget Sound Energy is big time lobbying for a huge rate increase. As if paying $4 a gallon for gas and the high cost of groceries isn't bad enough, now PSE wants to further strain the working poor.

Like I said to Brian when our Chevron gas bill came the other day, "they could at least enclose a tube of K-Y."

SnarkAngel said...

LOL, Jojo!

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