Just had this price hike detals from Powergen.

I swapped to Equigas and Equipower a couple of months ago, no standing
charge, a fixed rate per unit with no "tiered" charge bands, and its a
non-profit organisation (they use Southern to handle all the billing
etc)

http://www.ebico.co.uk

They *are* listed on uswitch, but you need to make sure you tick
"include social tariffs" and "suppliers you can't swap to through us"

Colin Wilson wrote:

I swapped to Equigas and Equipower a couple of months ago, no standing
charge, a fixed rate per unit with no "tiered" charge bands, and its a
non-profit organisation (they use Southern to handle all the billing
etc)

Me too, nearly a year ago now, and no more price rises in that time -
can't help thinking there must be some big ones coming up soon...
Another advantage is that you aren't penalised if you don't wish to pay
by DD.

http://www.ebico.co.uk

How have you found the service from Southern Electric?

--
Andy

http://www.ebico.co.uk
How have you found the service from Southern Electric?

I've had no cause to contact them - and the bills are the clearest i've
ever seen !

http://www.coreutilities.co.uk/equigas1.jpg
http://www.coreutilities.co.uk/equigas2.jpg
http://www.coreutilities.co.uk/equipower1.jpg
http://www.coreutilities.co.uk/equipower2.jpg

Colin Wilson wrote:

How have you found the service from Southern Electric?

I've had no cause to contact them - and the bills are the clearest i've
ever seen !

They screwed-up my gas transfer by sending a wrong meter reading to BG.
That took quite a few phone calls to sort out - each blaming the other
- until I got the refund I was due from BG.

The web site is crap and it took a few e-mails before I could register
successfully for the on-line service (initially it wouldn't accept the
customer a/c numbers I was given).

In their favour though, e-mails to customerservice@ are answered
reasonably promptly, and now things have settled down there are no great
problems, and the prices are good.

Estimated bills have been way off the mark, but I guess that's to be
expected for the first year when they've no history to go on. Or does
your new supplier get usage history from your old as part of the
transfer process?

I was surprised to find that their gas bills use a different calculation
methodology to BG: Southern apply the volume conversion factor (VCF)
first, to give an adjusted consumption in m^3 (to two decimal places),
which they then multiply by the calorific value (to 4 DP) to get the kWh
used (2 DP), whereas BG give an unadjusted m^3 consumption figure (to 1
DP) then apply both the VCF and the CV (the latter rounded to 1 DP) in a
single step to get kWh, which they truncate to the next lowest integer.
OK, it only makes a few pence difference to a bill, but I would have
expected the calculation method to be standardised across all suppliers.

--
Andy

How have you found the service from Southern Electric?
I've had no cause to contact them - and the bills are the clearest i've
ever seen !
They screwed-up my gas transfer by sending a wrong meter reading to BG.
That took quite a few phone calls to sort out - each blaming the other
- until I got the refund I was due from BG.

That`s not always the fault of the supplier - the meter readers are
often employed by the host REC or subcontracted to the lowest bidder,
not the supplier...

The web site is crap and it took a few e-mails before I could register
successfully for the on-line service (initially it wouldn't accept the
customer a/c numbers I was given).

For Southern ? - I had no problems transferring via Ebico - it just took
a little longer than I expected from start to finish.

Estimated bills have been way off the mark, but I guess that's to be
expected for the first year when they've no history to go on. Or does
your new supplier get usage history from your old as part of the
transfer process?

AFAIK they don't get anything to work from - I was asked how much i'd
like to set my payments to, and I picked what I felt was a slightly
artificially high figure to begin with.

Colin Wilson wrote:

[Wrong meter reading sent]

That`s not always the fault of the supplier - the meter readers are
often employed by the host REC or subcontracted to the lowest bidder,
not the supplier...

No, this was my own (correct) reading sent to SE and which they used for
starting my Equigas account. SE then sent a different reading (50 meter
units (i.e. 5000 ft^3) /higher/ through the EDI system to BG, resulting
in me getting charged twice for thirty-odd quid's worth of gas...

[Crap web site]

For Southern ? - I had no problems transferring via Ebico - it just took
a little longer than I expected from start to finish.

As I said, the problems were only with registering on the SE web site,
which is entirely optional of course. The transfer itself was fine,
_except_ for the wrong gas meter reading being sent.

[Consumption history]

AFAIK they don't get anything to work from - I was asked how much i'd
like to set my payments to, and I picked what I felt was a slightly
artificially high figure to begin with.

I hate these rolling monthly DD schemes, where you end up paying them in
advance most of the time. As I said, one of the attractions of
Equipower & Equigas is that you can pay quarterly bills (always in
arrears of the actual consumption) by BACS or whatever without being
penalised on the price. I'll accept estimated readings if the bill's
within about ten quid of reality, otherwise they get revised readings -
this at least assures that they should build up an accurate usage
history to base future estimates on.

--
Andy

"Andy Wade" wrote in message
...



I hate these rolling monthly DD schemes, where you end up paying them in
advance most of the time.

When I was quoted a DD payment for (metered) water and more recently for
electricity which I considered too high I said I wasn't prepared to pay that
much and that if it weren't lowered I'd cancel the DD and go back to
quarterly payments. The payments were lowered to what I suggested and
they've been pretty accurate so far. When the price rises I'll accept that
the payments will have to increase too but it must still be proportionate.

Now that I'm in credit I'm going to change my payments to the phone company.

I'm very keen on DD for everything because it means I never forget to pay
and never have debts or worries (that's a constant nag as well as being
expensive) but I'm not prepared to pay over the odds.

DD is far preferable to the companies than quarterly payments so it's worth
negotiating - NOT arguing!

Mary

"Andy Wade" wrote in message
...
I hate these rolling monthly DD schemes, where you end up paying them in
advance most of the time. As I said, one of the attractions of Equipower
& Equigas is that you can pay quarterly bills (always in arrears of the
actual consumption) by BACS or whatever without being penalised on the
price. I'll accept estimated readings if the bill's within about ten quid
of reality, otherwise they get revised readings - this at least assures
that they should build up an accurate usage history to base future
estimates on.

This started off as a rant about Powergen but that's not my experience.
Feed in meter readings from time to time or after a statement and you get an
accurate statement. Orginally paying too much but no problem getting a
refund. Now my monthly payment is about right. Be surprised if you
couldn't get your monthly payment right if you tried. For the moment
Powergen is about the cheapest (Equipower and Equigas excepted). Not had
any notification (yet) of an increase and no evidence of a press release on
the subject though an increase soon wouldn't surprise me. If there is I
won't rant but make a balanced decision. Well not BG whatever the fugures
indicate.

Jim A

Jim Alexander wrote:

Feed in meter readings from time to time or after a statement and you get an
accurate statement. Orginally paying too much but no problem getting a
refund. Now my monthly payment is about right. Be surprised if you
couldn't get your monthly payment right if you tried.

Sorry, you've missed my point completely - I wasn't talking about
getting monthly payments right, I was talking about not wanting to pay
that way at all.

For the moment Powergen is about the cheapest

Not for electricity round here (East Anglia), where they taken over as
the default supplier (Eastern Electricity - TXU Energi - Powergen).
They're the most expensive.

[...] Well not BG whatever the fugures indicate.

Now who's being irrational? I never had any problem with BG, as default
gas supplier, until their prices started to go off the scale.

What is worth ranting about (IMHO) is the lack of clear visible
published tariffs in this industry. Go to most suppliers' Web sites and
look for their price lists. Usually you can't find any, just useless
'savings calculators' and stuff like that. Where they do exist the
tariffs tend to be well buried in the site without obvious navigation.

--
Andy

"Andy Wade" wrote in message
...
Jim Alexander wrote:

Feed in meter readings from time to time or after a statement and you get
an accurate statement. Orginally paying too much but no problem getting
a refund. Now my monthly payment is about right. Be surprised if you
couldn't get your monthly payment right if you tried.

Sorry, you've missed my point completely - I wasn't talking about getting
monthly payments right, I was talking about not wanting to pay that way at
all.

It's called thread drift. You MUST have seen it before - or even contributed
.... in fact you started a drift :-)

Mary

On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 16:50:42 +0100, Andy Wade wrote:

For the moment Powergen is about the cheapest

Not for electricity round here (East Anglia), where they taken over as
the default supplier (Eastern Electricity - TXU Energi - Powergen).
They're the most expensive.

And amongst the most expensive for here (Cumbria). Starting with NORWEB
then TXU etc... Our main supplier is Scotish Power online with standing
charge. The less used supplies are on Equipower (no standing charge at
all not even a "hidden one"(*) and a fixed reasonable price for what you
use).

Quite just now from Powergen of 14.931p/unit 1st 900. 9.261p for the
rest.
Scottish Power just gone up to 7.19p/unit.
Equipower 7.8p/unit for normal tarrif.
Equipower 2.73 - 9.19p/unit for E7.

2p/unit price difference doesn't seem much but at an average of 22
units/day that's £165/year!

(*) The vast majority of the "no standing charge" accounts charge you
significantly more for the first X units/qtr. It's odd that the price
difference between the first X units and the rest multiplied by the
number of units at the higher price equals the standing charge...

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

Dave Liquorice wrote:

(*) The vast majority of the "no standing charge" accounts charge you
significantly more for the first X units/qtr. It's odd that the price
difference between the first X units and the rest multiplied by the
number of units at the higher price equals the standing charge...

Very true, and you could say it's a complete con, although there can
still be circumstances in which you gain - when, for example, your
summer gas consumption is almost zero because you use electricity for
water heating in the summer.

--
Andy

On Tue, 01 Aug 2006 00:40:34 +0100, Andy Wade wrote:

Very true, and you could say it's a complete con, although there can
still be circumstances in which you gain - when, for example, your
summer gas consumption is almost zero because you use electricity for
water heating in the summer.

Wouldn't have thought using lecky at nearly 10p/unit would be ever more
economic than gas at less than 5p/unit. However not having mains gas it
is not a calculation I have ever even thought about doing....

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

Andy Wade writes:

Very true, and you could say it's a complete con, although there can
still be circumstances in which you gain - when, for example, your
summer gas consumption is almost zero because you use electricity for
water heating in the summer.

About two thirds of my leccy usage is night-rate (immersion, washing,
drying though am using the big orange thermonuclear ball at the
moment) even when I'm working at home. I've been wondering if, in a
different house I could generate a few hundred watts during the day
and make the large daytime component of my leccy bill disappear.

The tricky bit is whether to have a fancy mains-feeding inverter, for
which Powergen might give you a measly 3p/kWh or just have seperate
rings for things like fridge, computer, telly.

Jon

Dave Liquorice wrote:

Wouldn't have thought using lecky at nearly 10p/unit would be ever more
economic than gas at less than 5p/unit.

Well in my case the comparison is night-rate electric at 2.75 p/kWh
against gas at 1.85 p/kWh (both +VAT). So the gas only wins if burnt at
over about 65% efficiency. Since I have an ancient cast iron open flue
boiler and long 28mm gravity primary circuit to the cylinder I doubt
that the overall efficiency is that high. One day it will get replaced
by something more modern, but until then I'll continue to heat a
cylinderfull each morning on the E7, then top it up during the day if
necessary using gas.

--
Andy

Jonathan Schneider wrote:

About two thirds of my leccy usage is night-rate (immersion, washing,
drying though am using the big orange thermonuclear ball at the
moment) even when I'm working at home. I've been wondering if, in a
different house I could generate a few hundred watts during the day
and make the large daytime component of my leccy bill disappear.

The tricky bit is whether to have a fancy mains-feeding inverter, for
which Powergen might give you a measly 3p/kWh or just have seperate
rings for things like fridge, computer, telly.

Here's the obvious answer (not)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/1f01fc72-200...0779e2340.html

(Prices from about £9k, apparently, according to R4 last night.)

--
Andy

Andy Wade wrote:

Here's the obvious answer (not)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/1f01fc72-200...0779e2340.html

(Prices from about £9k, apparently, according to R4 last night.)

For the FT website subscription or the panels ;-)

MBQ