This is getting ridiculous (energy prices - Strictly NO referrals!)

[Brutal biff]

We can't do that according to Johnson as it will discourage further investment in fossil fuels , they don't get it that they are the source of our problems.

No they will keep putting the prices up robbing ********

 

[TheVoice]

It baffles me why anyone even pays by a fixed amount anymore, you are just opening yourself up to errors and being overcharged (overcharged in the sense that you are paying for fuel you haven't used yet in the summer period)
Just pay for what you use by DD and keep things simple, provide your readings each month to keep things up to date also even if you have a SM.

If the option was easily accessible I'm sure more people would. I'll try the live chat option though, but it really should be the default or at least accessible on my account. There's absolutely no mention of the option anywhere on their help pages.

 

[ltron]

No they will keep putting the prices up robbing ********

Exactly, they export to the highest bidder anyway so Johnson's plan won't solve anything and will take decades to bear any fruit by which time the climate crisis will be raging and fossil fuels will be dead.

 

[fez]

I think people are going to be surprised how well the conservatives do on Thursday. Boris has been chest beating about Russia in Ukraine to try and distract from his frankly criminal running of the country over the past few years. Plenty will love that hes "sticking it to Russia" and that we have a strong leader unlike those weak European leaders. Boris is teflon and the fact he is still in power speaks volumes. The rich will continue to get richer and the poor will keep suffering until hes gone.

While other countries are protecting their people from these energy prices, ours is protecting companies profits. Its astounding that we put up with this.

 

[robj20]

If the option was easily accessible I'm sure more people would. I'll try the live chat option though, but it really should be the default or at least accessible on my account. There's absolutely no mention of the option anywhere on their help pages.

Because they want you to have a large credit with them. I agree it should be the default payment option, but I have yet to be with a company that won't let you change to variable/whole amount payments.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Really regretting not going for the British Gas Exclusive Fix May 2023 they offered me back in early December now.

Stupid Russia.

Pretty poor advice from MSE....:

British Gas customers should DO NOTHING and ignore messages to one click switch that could cost them £100s a year more

British Gas customers should ignore emails they have received from the UK's biggest energy supplier encouraging them to switch to fixed-price deals as it could make them £100s a year worse off.

www.moneysavingexpert.com

The advice was pretty spot on for the time.
If people, including those in the actual energy companies, had of expected this level of increase (predicting war etc) then fixed prices available then would have been the same as they are now.

The only other way to do it would be to factor in (via expected values analysis) all the possible events that could have happened and create a new blended risk expectation of costs.
Can you give me the figures for the Ukraine war ending date, whether Russia will be exporting the same of less energy in future, and if space aliens will drop by any time soon and bring us the fusion answers?

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Because they want you to have a large credit with them. I agree it should be the default payment option, but I have yet to be with a company that won't let you change to variable/whole amount payments.

Kind of.
BG for example, their aim is to actually break even at the point when everyone in my area is due to have their meters read, which is March 2023 now. (they actually quoted this to me)
As such its going to seem like they are trying to build up a large credit since I am going to need to build up the balance to get me through next winter with equal amounts being taken vs spiky usage.

I've never had excessive credit build up, the time this is most likely to happen in my experience is allowing the history on your account to be based on estimates (creating a feedback loop). if you correct that then its been fine, in my experience.

 

[TheVoice]

Because they want you to have a large credit with them. I agree it should be the default payment option, but I have yet to be with a company that won't let you change to variable/whole amount payments.

I understand that, but it's a rather unique arrangement just for energy companies. You don't pay BT a fixed amount of their choosing just in case your usage suddenly goes up. Smart meters were sold as a way to give consumers more control over their usage and bills, yet at the moment mine isn't showing my new tariff data and my supplier isn't billing me for my actual usage.

The live chat feature has mysteriously entirely disappeared off the BG website so it's not going well so far.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

I understand that, but it's a rather unique arrangement just for energy companies. You don't pay BT a fixed amount of their choosing just in case your usage suddenly goes up. Smart meters were sold as a way to give consumers more control over their usage and bills, yet at the moment mine isn't showing my new tariff data and my supplier isn't billing me for my actual usage.

The live chat feature has mysteriously entirely disappeared off the BG website so it's not going well so far.

You pay BT in advance for a chunk of the service though.
If you pay them quarterly you pay for your service for the quarter in advance and calls afterwards.

I pay for my car insurance, house insurance, council tax, phone/broadband, prime, netflix all in advance

I think its a hangover from old state nationalisation that people expect to pay for utilities in arrears

Do you think BG for example pays for the energy they sell months in arrears as well?

 

[TheVoice]

You pay BT in advance for a chunk of the service though.

I never did. I got a monthly bill of my costs for the service and usage of that month, I was never in credit with them or owed a different amount to the payment they took.

I pay for my car insurance, house insurance, council tax, phone/broadband, prime, netflix all in advance

That's a bit different, you're paying a fixed price for a fixed period of service with those. I've no issue with how other companies are billing me.

 

[Illusion]

4K costs more to deliver, probably at least 4x more.

I’m not sure why you think charging more is ridiculous.

4x more based on what? (Just out of curiosity)

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

I never did. I got a monthly bill of my costs for the service and usage of that month, I was never in credit with them or owed a different amount to the payment they took.


That's a bit different, you're paying a fixed price for a fixed period of service with those. I've no issue with how other companies are billing me.

Thats interesting that you got a bill for BT in arrears, they have never offered that option in England. Its always been line rental etc in advance, usage in arrears.
Not optional and always been the same even going back to GPO

Your also paying for some fixed element in arrears with utilities, standing charges.

Its still not the point, they can't provide the energy for free they need to pay for it.
If everyone paid in arrears, then the chances are the prices would be higher since the companies would either need to borrow or expect shareholders to fund the energy purchases whilst waiting for customers pay yeah (yeah right!)

I remember well when it was normal to pay in arrears for your bill, people would complain all the time about getting random amounts with just 14 days to pay, "not even getting paid before this is due" that sort of thing.

Simple fact is for most people its easier to budget costs into equal buckets since they get paid in equal buckets.
Its more about the accuracy than the timing.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

4x more based on what? (Just out of curiosity)

Costs of server based stuff are generally storage (physical storage cost and servers to send/receive it), and throughput (usage of network capacity). 4x higher def will be 4x on both of those metrics pretty much.

 

[TheVoice]

Thats interesting that you got a bill for BT in arrears, they have never offered that option in England. Its always been line rental etc in advance, usage in arrears.

Perhaps that's what it was then, I'm not with BT any more so I can't check. In any case, line rental is a fixed cost so I don't have an issue with that, I'm still only being charged what is actually owed.

Its still not the point, they can't provide the energy for free they need to pay for it.
If everyone paid in arrears, then the chances are the prices would be higher since the companies would either need to borrow or expect shareholders to fund the energy purchases whilst waiting for customers pay yeah (yeah right!)

I'm not an energy industry expert so the inner-workings will forever remain a mystery to me, but I do know that plenty of industries work in arrears. In any case, I'm not suggesting they switch over everyone to actual-usage billing as clearly plenty of people like paying an arbitrary amount (still amazes me how many people actually manually pay their bills, but there we go), but at least provide the option.

 

[Foghorn Leghorn]

It baffles me why anyone even pays by a fixed amount anymore, you are just opening yourself up to errors and being overcharged (overcharged in the sense that you are paying for fuel you haven't used yet in the summer period)
Just pay for what you use by DD and keep things simple, provide your readings each month to keep things up to date also even if you have a SM.

It depends when you switch. Switch in September/October time and you'll spend almost 12 months in debit rather than credit

 

[ci_newman]

Thats interesting that you got a bill for BT in arrears, they have never offered that option in England. Its always been line rental etc in advance, usage in arrears.
Not optional and always been the same even going back to GPO

Your also paying for some fixed element in arrears with utilities, standing charges.

Its still not the point, they can't provide the energy for free they need to pay for it.
If everyone paid in arrears, then the chances are the prices would be higher since the companies would either need to borrow or expect shareholders to fund the energy purchases whilst waiting for customers pay yeah (yeah right!)

I remember well when it was normal to pay in arrears for your bill, people would complain all the time about getting random amounts with just 14 days to pay, "not even getting paid before this is due" that sort of thing.

Simple fact is for most people its easier to budget costs into equal buckets since they get paid in equal buckets.
Its more about the accuracy than the timing.

Telephone bills have always been in arrears, how can you pay for telephone calls that you haven't made yet? Same with mobile phones, you pay for any calls you make in the month *after* you've made those calls, not in advance (excluding bundled minutes / data etc).

 

[413x]

Damn the price of natural gas is still going up. Unbelievable.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Telephone bills have always been in arrears, how can you pay for telephone calls that you haven't made yet? Same with mobile phones, you pay for any calls you make in the month *after* you've made those calls, not in advance (excluding bundled minutes / data etc).

Sorry if it confused you as we were talking about two things I switched back to energy half way through in response to his two comments.

As I was saying, everything I can think of apart from utilities you pay in front or at least partly in front.
For things that have a fixed and variable element, such as phones, broadband (before they all moved to fixed amounts) etc you tend to pay for the fixed part in advance, and the variable bit in arrears.

Taking the same thing into account with utilities would mean you paid for the standing charges in advance and usage in arrears. We don't even do that.

Which is all fine. BUT paying in arrears means someone is financing that. If someone is financing it, its in effect being added to the bill via an alternate means.
When it was all state owned it was far less of an issue than now its privately owned.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

4x more based on what? (Just out of curiosity)

Costs of server based stuff are generally storage (physical storage cost and servers to send/receive it), and throughput (usage of network capacity). 4x higher def will be 4x on both of those metrics pretty much.

This^^

4K is about 4 times size of 1080p on a like for like basis, 4K is typically also a higher bit rate increasing its size further.

The cost to serve video is significant, the higher the quality, the more data centres and bandwidth you need to serve it to your customers. Not only that, the production side is impacted. Everything from costumes and make up to mastering, editing etc are all more expensive and time consuming.

 

[jordan47354]

This^^

4K is about 4 times size of 1080p on a like for like basis, 4K is typically also a higher bit rate increasing its size further.

The cost to serve video is significant, the higher the quality, the more data centres and bandwidth you need to serve it to your customers. Not only that, the production side is impacted. Everything from costumes and make up to mastering, editing etc are all more expensive and time consuming.

The size is entirely determined by bitrate and time, it's not further increasing the size as you said. 4K is exactly 4 times the resolution of 1080p, however the bitrate isn't typically increased by 4 times as they tend to use newer more efficient codecs on 4K content. Storage and bandwidth costs to deliver it are increased but per person we're talking a few pennies not pounds.