British Gas ripping of customers again

[barney15c]

British gas have just announced their price rises of 18% ave on Gas and 16% on electricity, 1% less on Gas and a massive 6% more on electricity than scottish power.
They had the cheek to say that they had been selling at a loss for 4 months....pull the other one.

£740m profit last year and wholesale prices are a third less than their peak in 2008 makes me think BG are talking b**l*cks.

[anotheoldgit]

I fail to understand anyone being a customer of British Gas, they are always the first to impose rises, which prompts others to follow.

[riptide]

Appalling, how are the poor and older people going to survive with these prices. Where is it all going to stop, they just cannot go on increasing prices all the time, we will all freeze to death. Shame on them.

[mumsie_wumsie]

So who are the best gas and electricity suppliers. I mean once one goes up surely the rest follow so in the end there is not much difference??? I am with BG, but would change if there was a significant reduction from another supplier. I currently pay £39 pm electric and £37 pm gas.

[ichkeria]

There's no point picking on British Gas - they are all as bad as each other.

[Haggisdj]

I know I always harp on about this but it seems sooooooo wrong that people can charge VAT and make huge profits on the things that we need to survive... especially when until relatively recently they never did.

[anotheoldgit]

I am considering having solar panels fitted to my roof, has anyone any experience of these?

[mumsie_wumsie]

A friend has recently moved into a new house with solar panels. Obviously, as yet she hasn't had a winter there, but she says she has constant hot water that doesn't cost her a penny. She will only get gas or electricity bill iff she has to top up water/heating when /if it gets very cold. So the savings must be quite good. Of course she hasn't had the expense of putting the panels in, so that has to be weighed up against the cost of having them.

[KARL]

Energy prices (essentially fossil fuels) are likely to keep rising and governments will continue levying tax, including VAT, and people will continue complaining. The worst point of rising energy prices is the fact that most of that energy will go straight out into the open because British housing stock is of such an appallingly low thermal standard. Overall, very few people in Britain heat their houses except selectively room by room, very intermittently (timed, both by clock and calendar) and to a low target temperature. The inevitable results are widespread and major problems with condensation. Heating is thus not generally a priority in Britain and increasing prices are perhaps likely to push it even lower down the list.

[KARL]

I have thermal solar panels. Today is a partly cloudy day and my water tank was about to boil when I switched the heat to the radiators this morning. All doors and windows are open and every room is above 22 degrees, close to 25 in the warmest ones. Why have the radiators on, you ask - why not, especially as the circulating liquid would otherwise have started to boil in the panels, but what is wrong with being warm and comfortable (I have never seen any merit in not being warm indoors and completely independent of the weather) ? The panels can be expected to last indefinitely and the only energy input into the system is for the controls and pump, these days just about one kWh per 24 hours which at my fixed rate until 2015 amounts to abut 12 pence. I hope to get enough heat through six months of operation of the panels to survive without anything else - this is the first month of operation. If so, then my total cost for heating to a minimum of 18 degrees in every room of the house (minimum of 21 degrees during awake-and-present time) and all the hot water we need will come to perhaps £20 or so. I am confident of covering four months this way. The rest of the time I will need to burn waste wood which I get for free and achieve the same results.

[KARL]

*about

[Old_Geezer]

I don't know how the government thinks many of us will cope. Perhaps they should nationalise all the power companies and sell power at an affordable price.

As for solar panels on the roof (ugly things) as far as I can make out they are only worth considering (if you can bear them) because of the artificial price the government insists the power companies pay for any energy sold to them. And of course the companies have to make up the profit from elsewhere, and guess what goes up to pay for it. If the scheme had any financial validity then the government wouldn't need to interfere, effectively forcing the majority of us to pay a subsidy to those who opt to have them, and who don't seem to care who is having to pay for it.

[KARL]

OG, I think you are confusing photovoltaics (electricity generating) with thermal ones (where the sun's heat is captured as heat). Thermal panels simply do their thing irrespective of energy companies, governments or anything else, except of course the weather - I don't see a downside at all. If you have them then the cost of energy does not come into the issue at all (bar the tiny amount spent on the controls and pump, probably overestimated by me at £25 per 6 months - think about how long it takes someone to drink or smoke that sort of money). As to whether the panels are ugly or not, I would suggest chimneys, especially those with pots and/or caps on them, are far worse - but then I don't see them as totems to be preserved, as a lot of people seem to because around here houses are festooned with 100-130 year old ones that to me look as ugly as sin with pots/caps of all shapes and sizes, variously tilting and with vegetation sprouting out all over the place. Give me panels freeing me from the energy companies any day (much less obtrusive), instead of monuments/icons to the filth of the coalburning past.

[notasyoungasiwas]

And Cameron, the big liar, PROMISED he wouldn't touch pensioners winter fuel allowance and what has he done? Taken £50 off the over sixty's and £100 off the over 80's. How on earth poorer pensioners are now supposed to cope with these deadly rises is beyond me. Fuel companies are, in my opinion, corrupt. How dreadful having to choose between fuel and food.

[barney15c]

i heard a story that pensioners last winter were going into charity shops and buying up cheap paperback books (5 /10p a go) to burn for heating as it was cheaper than buying coal !!! As the 6th richest country on earth have we really stooped so low our pensioners that they have to resort to that

[notasyoungasiwas]

I agree barney I think it's disgusting the way our elderly are treated, they are amongst the most vulnerable in society as cold can kill. I bet so many of them are dreading next winter now. I just hope Cameron doesn't stop the winter fuel allowance altogether next year - nothing would surprise me with this liar.

[Old_Geezer]

I may be no expert Karl, but I suspect that if you sell any excess back to the power companies then the same rules would apply. If you merely use the energy yourself then that's another matter, but I'm unsure how the incentive schemes work then. All this, "you can pay for it yourself up-front and sell any excess energy to the energy company, or else you can effectively hire your roof-space out to the energy company to use, and get paid for it ", stuff. The reason I'm not keen (besides the view) is I came across a similar thread on a different site, was given a few links to read up on it; and was most unimpressed.

[KARL]

OG, you are definitely mixing apples and pears. There is no question of selling what is basically hot water to anyone - you either use it in your own dwelling (as hot tapwater or warm radiators) or it simply goes cold in time. Thermal panels are "the other sort", not at all what you are about. If I were to try to put an analogy to you, then you might have said there is a risk that my fuel will escape into the atmosphere if there is a leak in the pipes. But if my fuel is scrap wood then we are clearly talking of different things - you would presumably be meaning gas.

[KARL]

Oh, there is no incentive scheme that I know of unless the government subsidises these things to reduce the carbon footprint - which I think they may do although I did not look into it.

[TTG]

Only a handful of people (i.e. the board) benefit from that £740m profit. Imposing a price rise like that just to make another £700m profit is disgusting.