Bulb - Finally going into Administration

I'm with Bulb and I think energy along with water should be nationalised. Why should fat cats profit from essential services like these.
Because public sector is full of chocolate tea pots who can't deliver to time cost nor quality targets and are accountable to no one.
 
I've just moved into a new electric only property so the new tariff is lower and I don't have any credit with Bulb.

My past experience is that the company becomes very difficult to contact regarding any issues with the initial bills if they go under, despite ofgem.

Electric only…heat pump or electric heating?
 
Good good. Just annoys me that the government seems to advocate hearing that is 3/4 x more expensive than what we normally do.

Years of disastrous energy policy I suppose, with nuclear if the price of fuel goes up 10x the electricity costs only goes up 2x, now we're left at the mercy of Russia.

Plus there is a massive confusion between storage heaters and electric radiators, people seem to think they are the same. The previous tenants were using an economy 7 tariff which is absurd because my apartment has radiators not storage heaters. As for hot water, I only use it for showers so just put the immersion heater on for 1 hour a day and gone on to a normal tariff.
 
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Perhaps someone can educate me on the point I’m missing here.

Challenger companies try to compete with the bigger players. Competition is a good thing. I can understand the fate of those who offered fixed price plans in the face of huge wholesale price rises; this was not Bulb.

Bulb, who have no fixed tariffs, only a variable tariff that is linked to wholesale prices appear to be a victim of a government price cap beyond their control. I understand why the government wants a price cap in place, but in the face of unprecedented market conditions, I don’t understand why the price cap isn’t adjusted to reflect wholesale prices to give companies a fighting chance? I don’t like paying more for my energy but I understand if costs rise, I will need to pay more.

Why should companies have to operate at a loss due to government imposed restrictions? How long can the “big boys” hold out for?
 
Perhaps someone can educate me on the point I’m missing here.

Challenger companies try to compete with the bigger players. Competition is a good thing. I can understand the fate of those who offered fixed price plans in the face of huge wholesale price rises; this was not Bulb.

Bulb, who have no fixed tariffs, only a variable tariff that is linked to wholesale prices appear to be a victim of a government price cap beyond their control. I understand why the government wants a price cap in place, but in the face of unprecedented market conditions, I don’t understand why the price cap isn’t adjusted to reflect wholesale prices to give companies a fighting chance? I don’t like paying more for my energy but I understand if costs rise, I will need to pay more.

Why should companies have to operate at a loss due to government imposed restrictions? How long can the “big boys” hold out for?

I suspect the answer here is "brown envelopes".
 
Why should companies have to operate at a loss due to government imposed restrictions?
i guess the idea is that they should plan ahead, and the price cap should force them to, and force them to buy ahead to secure a future that they can survive even if they have a bad winter.

speculation of course, but imagine no price cap, none of them would have bought ahead, we'd all be facing double/triple our normal bills, wholesale could rise to whatever level it wanted as we'd be paying for it, not these companies that can't afford so will be fighting to make sure whatever has to happen to bring it down, does.

i do agree that there should be some clause to allow these companies some extra charge, even if it's just 3 months of 20% increase then it has to go back or something like that, however who suffers the most for this? only the poor.

my heating/electric bills we pay £165 per month, which is a tiny percentage of my wage in the grand scheme of things, i could easily pay £250 and not notice. can a poor person afford the £165 as it is, let alone an increase?
 
speculation of course, but imagine no price cap, none of them would have bought ahead, we'd all be facing double/triple our normal bills, wholesale could rise to whatever level it wanted as we'd be paying for it, not these companies that can't afford so will be fighting to make sure whatever has to happen to bring it down, does.

What happens if higher prices hold out beyond the period over which the company have hedged out? Then the end customer will end up footing the bill eventually anyway.

On the other hand, if prices had fallen dramatically and companies had hedged at much higher levels, they would also be facing huge losses if they were forced to supply at a price linked to wholesale.

I suppose what I’m getting it is, smoothing via hedging aside, should we not expect to have to pay prices linked to wholesale?
 
Why should companies have to operate at a loss due to government imposed restrictions? How long can the “big boys” hold out for?

I'm with Bulb (they were the cheapest deal around when I joined), but you have to also realise that Bulb and most of these other companies going bust are largely pointless - they don't produce any electricity/gas, they just buy futures in it to try and beat the market.

In an ideal world, stripping out all the pointless middlemen and CEOs taking their £m pound of flesh bonuses (which we're paying for) and we could all enjoy cheap energy.

I'm all in favour of nationalising energy, but we all know it'll end up being a shambles.
 
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Seems to be around the 200p mark recently, so still up a lot but not quite 300-400 range at least.
 
Perhaps someone can educate me on the point I’m missing here.

Challenger companies try to compete with the bigger players. Competition is a good thing. I can understand the fate of those who offered fixed price plans in the face of huge wholesale price rises; this was not Bulb.

Bulb, who have no fixed tariffs, only a variable tariff that is linked to wholesale prices appear to be a victim of a government price cap beyond their control. I understand why the government wants a price cap in place, but in the face of unprecedented market conditions, I don’t understand why the price cap isn’t adjusted to reflect wholesale prices to give companies a fighting chance? I don’t like paying more for my energy but I understand if costs rise, I will need to pay more.

Why should companies have to operate at a loss due to government imposed restrictions? How long can the “big boys” hold out for?

Yeah, I think there is too much coddling here, in part because lots of consumers are just dumb. If people don't shop around or don't want to make their own call on fixed vs variable why should that screw everything for others.
 
I'm with Bulb and I think energy along with water should be nationalised. Why should fat cats profit from essential services like these.
Though with water, you have to go with the company covering your area. Though the village where I lived as a kid, my parents had one company for supply and another company for sewage. Companies are Severn Trent and Anglian Water. Can’t remember which way round it is and do villagers today have to pay two companies today.
 
Energy companies should only increase the DD by a certain amount if customer is in credit. If cost of energy goes up 10% then it should be only 10% max increase. Or if you are in debit by £240 for an easy example- then £20 plus 10%. My parents with one company were £180 in credit and wanted to increase their DD by £31 a month!

Ideally you should be in credit in spring/summer so that helps out in winter.
 
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