Standing Charge

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Joined
23 Aug 2020
Posts
163
For the 4th or fifth time in a year our utilities supplier has put prices up because wholesale prices have gone up.
Can't quite understand why they also put up the daily standing charge. Are they giving there employees a 20% pay rise?
 
As you say, wholesale prices go up, so those costs are passed to the consumer by way of increasing the unit costs, or by increasing the standing charge.

You can normally find tariffs with lower standing charges, but normally have slightly higher unit costs, so pretty much YMMV.
 
same, just moved to a 24month fix with shell, probably going to be as much of a pain but after three 'sorry, we never do this, but your price is going to go up' e-mails from bulb enough is enough.
 
Same here, however according to uSwitch:

There are no savings available right now through Uswitch


Your current plan must be pretty good! There are currently no cheaper plans available.


Find out when a better deal becomes available by signing up for savings alerts.
 
If they change the prices sometimes this can trigger a clause allowing you to switch supplier.
We moved from British Gas in September last year as they were an absolute nightmare we will NEVER go back to them.
To be honest can't be arsed to keep changing supplier but starting to feel after the number of price hikes this year that we're being treated like cash cows.
 
There are no savings available right now through Uswitch

I'm not too fussed at the actual cost just the multiple price rises in such a short time and going back to my original point why does the Standing Charge get hiked?

As a side note I've always been rather sceptical when it comes to price comparison websites as don't they only show/advertise prices from companies that pay them a kickback? Wasn't GoCompare recently fined for this??
 
We moved from British Gas in September last year as they were an absolute nightmare we will NEVER go back to them.
To be honest can't be arsed to keep changing supplier but starting to feel after the number of price hikes this year that we're being treated like cash cows.

I feel ya buddy. I moved to a large one over here and after a few months - letter notifying raise in prices.. then as my contract was coming up they sent out another raise but luckily I found a good alternative so initiated the switch as the contract ended.

I think its disgusting they drag out the marketing prices knowing full well that a hike is inbound. Two rises in the year though they can all suck a nut!

How on earth are people meant to become more energy efficient and shift into things like electric cars when all we can see is prices going up and up..

I'm not too fussed at the actual cost just the multiple price rises in such a short time and going back to my original point why does the Standing Charge get hiked?

Agree. Its being stealthy, I don't mind if genuinely there is a rise coming and they keep you informed, but the regulator needs to make it ultra clear to them that allowing people to move out of the contract once they alter their tariff's has to be a given for people to stay on top of sensible billing.
 
Same here, however according to uSwitch:

There are no savings available right now through Uswitch


Your current plan must be pretty good! There are currently no cheaper plans available.


Find out when a better deal becomes available by signing up for savings alerts.

The other is as soon as you do switch you get a letter or more likely email these days from the new company saying they're putting all their prices up! So no real savings at all it turns out just some are quicker to put them up than others but they all go up
 
Electricity companies are a nightmare to be honest.

Changing them is a pain, something invariably ALWAYS goes wrong, if you dont change, they keep putting prices up......
 
Electricity companies are a nightmare to be honest.

Changing them is a pain, something invariably ALWAYS goes wrong, if you dont change, they keep putting prices up......
I'd disagree with this typically but I'm totally turned off the idea of switching supplier as I know the smart meters will **** up for god knows how long and I don't want to go back to reading meters :p
 
On OVO Simpler Energy and all the comparison websites say there are no better deals. OVO currently charge £95 a month combined for 3618kWh annual electricity usage and 19156kWh annual gas usage. Seems pretty decent but surprised there are no better deals anywhere.
 
Had the email from Bulb too and I'm sure I only had one a few months ago too. Maybe they should stop the £50 referrals and make the prices cheaper for everyone instead.
 
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