Associate
Octopus are paying out the alternate fuel payment of £200, just received mine today.
I don't understand why prepaid is more per unit. There's less overhead in terms of account management, and no credit risk..? Should be cheaper than postpaid.
I don't understand why prepaid is more per unit. There's less overhead in terms of account management, and no credit risk..? Should be cheaper than postpaid.
Why are prepayment meters more expensive than standard credit meters?
While the savings are lower right now due to the energy crisis, a typical household on a standard tariff, paying by monthly direct debit, still pays £79 a year less than someone on prepayment.
One of the main reasons prepayment meters are more expensive than standard credit meters is simply that they are more effort for the suppliers. Providers prefer to get regular, automatic payments for your energy, which is what you get with direct debit payments on standard credit meters. This is why it's the cheapest way of getting your energy.
So that’s BGs fault because the courts and tribunal service failed in their duty, not sure I follow that one.
BG can apply for as many orders as they want, just like the police can ask for as many search warrants that they want. Just because they have asked, doesn’t mean they should be approved. It’s literally the courts entire job to ensure the relevant checks and balances as set out in statute are followed.
If the statute, regulation or guidelines are wrong then the buck is passed to the regulator and the government I’m afraid.
Sure you can place moral blame on the energy company, but that’s all it is.
Edit: It’s also worth pointing out that the energy companies are legally required to protect the interests of their shareholders.
Typically you're making more, smaller payments and there is still the same level of account infrastructure/management if not more (you still need the meter linked to an account, and you're potentially making 1 or more payments a week vs 1 DD a month). There are still also a lot of people on older prepayment meters that require things like physical tokens to be inserted into the meter to update the balance, and they require a different type of meter entirely to standard, and that the various pay points have the equipment to interact with that token and the pay point will want a fee for handling the transaction on top of your normal banking fees.I don't understand why prepaid is more per unit. There's less overhead in terms of account management, and no credit risk..? Should be cheaper than postpaid.
I don't understand why prepaid is more per unit. There's less overhead in terms of account management, and no credit risk..? Should be cheaper than postpaid.
Breaking into peoples homes and force fitting pre payment meters really paying off for British Gas.
Taking people for mugs really considering everyone was told costs were raising because of the war when in reality costs stayed the same and they just rose prices to consumers to profit 3x, government should make these companies pay for their deception on the public with another windfall tax and a rebate to households, but that's probably unlikely and society will get even more angry![]()
Centrica boss refuses to say if he will waive bonus after ‘obscene’ £3.3bn profit
Chris O’Shea urged to ‘look at his conscience’ amid cost of living crisis and prepayment meter scandalwww.theguardian.com
Taking people for mugs really considering everyone was told costs were raising because of the war when in reality costs stayed the same and they just rose prices to consumers to profit 3x, government should make these companies pay for their deception on the public with another windfall tax and a rebate to households, but that's probably unlikely and society will get even more angry
Don't think pre pay with additional hardware, number of transactions etc will ever match the simplicity and cost of DD for companies.
DD collections are cheap, with mass collections of the scale they are doing they are probably paying very low double digits pence per collection. (I mean likely 10-20p each)
Card based collections would likely be that level per transaction, minimum. (not likely below 1% of the ticket, so a £10 elec card topup would be 10p etc)
What could be better for prepay is to set the unit costs the same, but pay the specific additional costs of the network on top. That way adding less frequently could save money compared to having to share the larger costs for many many micro transactions.
The supply and demand didn't change, what changed was Europe deciding they didn't want Russian gas, which caused prices to increase due to greed, which ironically helped Russia as they could now charge the new price and people still paidThe global cost of gas increased due to supply/demand.
I actually also wouldnt be surprised if the costs of changing meters to prepay was also considered a prepay cost when ultimately its a credit customer who is in arrears, the more I think about it the more skewed I think it is.
A prepay could also be topped up via DD if a provider chose to accept that type of payment.
You mean Russia closed 2 major gas pipelines leaving Europe with much less supply.The supply and demand didn't change, what changed was Europe deciding they didn't want Russian gas, which caused prices to increase due to greed, which ironically helped Russia as they could now charge the new price and people still paid
It was greed that caused the increase in prices
This isn't true, supply is the same, demand is the same all that's happened is a change in providers (Technically there is a slight increase in demand due to reaching back to pre Covid levels, but it's not really an increase in demand, it's just returning to normal levels)You mean Russia closed 2 major gas pipelines leaving Europe with much less supply.
That wasn’t a choice - it was forced!
-> Supply was much less
-> Demand was about the same as previous winters
Back to my point about the general public not fully understanding the situation, before their fingers type nonsense on social media![]()