Soldato
Who is your supplier? some of them do have funds to help pay off debt for people who are struggling if they meet some conditions.
Energy Prices (Strictly NO referrals!)
- Thread starter DXP55
- Start date
Who is your supplier? some of them do have funds to help pay off debt for people who are struggling if they meet some conditions.
Soldato
EON Next. We already used their fund when the whole situation with my mom started and we had arrears.
So afaik wont be able too again.
From the current prices, it will only go down by about 9.5%. Using January's prices, it will go down by about 13.9% percent. Not as much as people could do with right now, but it's a gesture at least.
It looks as though prices will fall slightly more in July, with the possibility of increasing back to what looks like April's price in October.
So my own bill will fall from around £120 to £110/pcm in April. That's nearly 150% the price I was paying in 2021, of around £70/pcm.
It could well be the water. I've heard of many people's bills plummeting after turning their water heaters off.
If you can't or don't want a smart meter, have a look on eBay, Gumtree, etc for those energy monitors that you clamp on the wires near your meter. They're not as accurate as smart meters, but they're close enough to help you find any culprits.
Ie: https://www.theowl.com/index.php/products/energy-monitors/
Soldato
Worth an ask, not sure if they limit you to only one use of it.
It's hard to say what the best move is beyond that, but I don't think you've posted your stats to say how much you use per day/week/month/year etc. Helps to understand if your current usage is high or not.
Some considerations:
1) It doesn't sound like you have a smart meter, can you get one put in? They are very useful for working out actual usage as it can break down what you're using at 30 min intervals in the day, so you can see if you're getting extreme spikes of usage and when. Helps you work out what is causing it.
2) Can you sacrifice anything else short term to help pay the debt off? Moving to Octopus tracker would probably help alleviate the costs. With the debt being there you're stuck paying higher costs, which is a self-perpetuating cycle of costing you too much and being unable to pay it down as a result.
3) Can you move the debt to another instrument? i.e. personal loan (this clearly has a cost associated with it) or if your credit score is good, get a good 0% interest free credit card, and then see if you can pay the debt off using that. I can do manual payments to Octopus on my Amex card so it seems they do accept credit card payments. If not then you can move regular spending (food, petrol etc) to an interest free card, and then use the balance you didn't spend to clear the debt on the energy instead. This requires good discipline though as it's just transferring the debt to another thing.
I feel for your situation but it's difficult to get yourself out of this if your income doesn't meet your outgoings, something has to give somewhere.
Soldato
We don't have a smart meter no, we are also renting so its not that simple to get one installed. I will need to ask the landlord.
There is also nothing we can sacrifice, I live very basically at the moment. No luxuries, I don't go out, I don't drink, I don't smoke neither does my mom who's going through radiotherapy(brain tumor). We are very tight with our shopping and other outgoings due to the limited income obviously. I don't remember the last time I spent money on anything other than the absolute necessities.
I don't think I can get another credit card. I only recently started working again after being off for most of the year due to my mothers condition earlier in the year.
The energy bill is just too high, its the only thing among everything else that I cannot afford. I can't check my usage right now as I'm not at home. I will be having look at our water heater to make sure it isn't constantly cycling during the day, other then that I'm going to have to call EON to discuss this tomorrow.
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Soldato
No harm in asking, they're pretty much being mandated everywhere these days, not sure why they would say no if you ask them, or what reason they'd have not to have one fitted.
Just say you keep getting calls from your supplier offering one and it feels like an inevitability at this point, and ask if they'd approve it so you can stop getting called about it?
I would try this approach:
1) Speak to EON and ask about the fund again, but also mention that you will try and analyse and cut back energy usage further as well. So rather than just requesting payment, you're also trying to improve the situation (so you hopefully don't need it again).
2) As you don't have a smart meter, you could either try and get hold of the clip on usage monitors that someone else mentioned, that would let you see real time etc what was being used, or you could take a few sequential reads of the electric meter, 2-3 days every 12 hours or so (set an alarm) would probably indicate where you had usage problems, and what your actual usage is like. Extrapolate out accordingly across weeks, months etc, usage patterns excluding heating don't usually change that much for electricity consumption. The latter option is free to do so I'd suggest that first.
How often do you submit readings? Ideally send them religiously once per month on the same date, this gives you a full month by month cost breakdown.
Check your previous bills and see what the usage was like across different actual reads (not estimates). Billing history and last 12 months or so worth of bills should show you this.
Figure from meter today = A
Closest actual figure you can get from a bill about a year ago = B
B - A = total consumed units. (C)
C / Days = average per day.
How fast has the debt gone up? typically speaking your spring/summer should be cheaper, so if you started the year at £0 debt, and it's £600 now, you've likely been under-paying at your quoted monthly rate.
If you can work out your actual usage, post it here, because we're a little blind on that currently. I use about 17 kWh per day in a 3 bed detached for reference, pretty heavy electric usage, but my heating/hot water is gas fired.
At a certain point though you can't drop usage to zero, you pretty much need basics on, and hot water is pretty necessary as well. So first things first, you need to establish if you have any room to move here.
Soldato
Our debt has been going up roughly £40-70 a month, we pay a set amount that we can afford which was discussed with EON. I will need to do all the things you mentioned to provide information here. I had no ability to pay more due to circumstances previously mentioned.No harm in asking, they're pretty much being mandated everywhere these days, not sure why they would say no if you ask them, or what reason they'd have not to have one fitted.
Just say you keep getting calls from your supplier offering one and it feels like an inevitability at this point, and ask if they'd approve it so you can stop getting called about it?
I would try this approach:
1) Speak to EON and ask about the fund again, but also mention that you will try and analyse and cut back energy usage further as well. So rather than just requesting payment, you're also trying to improve the situation (so you hopefully don't need it again).
2) As you don't have a smart meter, you could either try and get hold of the clip on usage monitors that someone else mentioned, that would let you see real time etc what was being used, or you could take a few sequential reads of the electric meter, 2-3 days every 12 hours or so (set an alarm) would probably indicate where you had usage problems, and what your actual usage is like. Extrapolate out accordingly across weeks, months etc, usage patterns excluding heating don't usually change that much for electricity consumption. The latter option is free to do so I'd suggest that first.
How often do you submit readings? Ideally send them religiously once per month on the same date, this gives you a full month by month cost breakdown.
Check your previous bills and see what the usage was like across different actual reads (not estimates). Billing history and last 12 months or so worth of bills should show you this.
Figure from meter today = A
Closest actual figure you can get from a bill about a year ago = B
B - A = total consumed units. (C)
C / Days = average per day.
How fast has the debt gone up? typically speaking your spring/summer should be cheaper, so if you started the year at £0 debt, and it's £600 now, you've likely been under-paying at your quoted monthly rate.
If you can work out your actual usage, post it here, because we're a little blind on that currently. I use about 17 kWh per day in a 3 bed detached for reference, pretty heavy electric usage, but my heating/hot water is gas fired.
At a certain point though you can't drop usage to zero, you pretty much need basics on, and hot water is pretty necessary as well. So first things first, you need to establish if you have any room to move here.
I report our meter readings once every month on the 15th. When I last went through the numbers about 2 months ago our usage would was £150-160.
I think what they have done is rolled the debt into the DD all of a sudden.. because we've barely been home this month so for our bill to jump up so much little sense.
Anyway I will take this all onboard and deal with it all tomorrow as best I can. Really this year my mother getting sick with this tumor has just created a complete mess of our finances, i've only just now been able to get any assistance in that regard (LCWRA Benefit and now a PIP assesment which hopefully results in her being awared).
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That’s ofgem price cap not necessarily the wholesale/tracker price.From the current prices, it will only go down by about 9.5%. Using January's prices, it will go down by about 13.9% percent. Not as much as people could do with right now, but it's a gesture at least.
It looks as though prices will fall slightly more in July, with the possibility of increasing back to what looks like April's price in October.
So my own bill will fall from around £120 to £110/pcm in April. That's nearly 150% the price I was paying in 2021, of around £70/pcm.
This time last year tracker were doing 25p when cap rate was 39p.
Fingers crossed the tracker remain good value across the board.
Still feel the supply side of things, companies and ofgem are taking the biscuits with the context of tracker rates.
Soldato
I might be wrong but I don’t think the tracker rates have exceeded the price cap rates since I joined at the beginning of this year. They’re often substantially cheaper, like today. It does suggest the price cap rates are incredibly cautious and therefore massively in favour of the energy companies, though I accept they are probably paying very inflated rates to hedge their supply costs too.
Soldato
good on you finding a negative in a positive......From the current prices, it will only go down by about 9.5%. Using January's prices, it will go down by about 13.9% percent. Not as much as people could do with right now, but it's a gesture at least.
It looks as though prices will fall slightly more in July, with the possibility of increasing back to what looks like April's price in October.
So my own bill will fall from around £120 to £110/pcm in April. That's nearly 150% the price I was paying in 2021, of around £70/pcm.
Soldato
Water seeing as we established your heating it with elec uses a lot of energy.
So 1) for starters check its only heating for a set period, but this isn't the big one since it will only top up whats needed. If your using lots of hot water then you need to pay to heat it. Potentially in combo with 3 below though it could add up!
2) check the temp its at, should be a small dial, its probably at something like 60c. You can drop below but be aware of legionairs disease. You may want to skip this for now with someone compromised in the house. But if its above 60c, drop to 60c
3) the biggest one, is the tank lagged? You want as much lagging as possible on the hot water tank.
If the lagging is old, looks thin or is missing completely suggest this https://www.wickes.co.uk/Wickes-British-Standard-Hot-Water-Cylinder-Jacket---457-x-1066mm/p/210203
Price cap is not day ahead pricing so it's not comparable.
Soldato
as soon as its not good value anymore they will have customers coming off it and probably adjust the price again
That's a goodo point actually, something I'd overlooked entirely.
Just trying not get my own hopes up, just in case the worst happens.
Over the last three that just updated I earned £1.67Oooooh £1.20 earned for Saving Sessions, and I turned everything off
Don't know what to spend my furtune on!
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Soldato
I understand that but whatever forecast methodology they use must be extremely prudent.