Price Rises For Gas & Electricity

Diamond Geezer

Diamond Geezer

Gone But Not Forgotten
Joined
May 2, 2003
Messages
13,884
I am a dual fuel customer with Npower and obviously not happy they have announced that electricity prices for its domestic customers will rise by 12.7%, while gas bills will see a 17.2% increase. Npower, the UK's fourth-largest energy provider, said it had been "forced to put up prices" because of soaring wholesale energy costs. No doubt other suppliers will follow suit in some way.

I have used one of the cost comparison services (U-Switch) and find I can save almost £200 a year by switching to Scottish Power.

http://www.uswitch.com/Energy/Index.aspx?s...eEnergy%7eindex

Basically you input a few details such as your postcode, your current provider,the name of the plan you are on and if possible you annual usage (easy enough if you keep your bills), your type of property, your preferred method of payment and they calculate any savings you could make by switching to various other suppliers.
If you want to switch you just click on a "switch" button and they do all the work for you including setting up a new direct debit with the new provider and cancelling your account with your old provider which apparently takes 4-6 weeks as there is a 28 day cancellation period with your current provider.

Well worth a look just to see what savings you could make.
 
Maybe a naive and silly thought but at the time of the utilities privatisations 20 years ago, I always felt they could be eventullly transferred to foreign ownership, e.g. French, and British customers made to subsidise their own national markets.

I don't know who owns NPOWER but I seem to remember French and German investors approaching British Utility companies a few years ago.

Does anyone know the relative major share holding of the utility/energy companies - I don't fancy trawling through the data?

Lets hope things don't go from bad to worse in 2008, must admit to not being optimistic this year - there seems to be some bad vibes concerning the general UK economy.

MR2
 
It has to be very likely that others will follow suit and raise their prices by similar amounts. You might end up paying more by switching in the short term.

Moneysavingexpert.com tends to keep an eye on these things and is good at giving advice on when (not) to switch.

also, I half-expect to get a phone call from the sales people at either Scottish Power or Scottish Gas in the next week or two offering me a fixed-price deal for a fixed term. If it's on a par with what I'm paying jsut now, I'll probably take it.
 
They'll all be putting up their prices pretty soon, I imagine.

What with the price of crude at around $100 a barrel, and set to rise further, the economic outlook isn't very bright at the moment, either for householders or for the economy in general.

There is more inflation in store this year, and I don't see the Bank of England being able to deliver all those MLR falls that many are forecasting.
 
Thank you Mrs Finchley, another stunning piece of short sighted greed that is coming home to haunt. But hey..... it was never about the customer
 
Interestingly, this morning, the BBC News raised the issue of comparing enegy prices on the continent to those in UK.
Their expert could not give a view on this ... perhaps a TH member has some evidence of price comparison.

MR2
 
Like the railways, these commodities need to be re-nationalised along with the water companies and stop people making monies as investors off our backs....
Thes are essential things we ALL need to allow us to live.............
 
Npower are German owned. I got collared at the door a few weeks back by one of their sale reps ( I was with Scottich Power ). He promised me the earth etc and I duly signed. Within two weeks, the guy who signed me up to Scottish Power appeared at the door to see why I wanted to switch. He produced all sorts of press releases etc which basically pointed out that Npower are a complete cowboy outfit who will promise savings and cheaper energy when they can't deliver it. I duly signed back to SP, and got a capped rate with Npower only getting one months worth out of me.
 
Joined NPower about 9 months ago, and did quite well out of them, for such time as they were cheaper. I've run up about £200 credit mind you which I've left alone, which seems daft as it's sitting in their bank and not mine. Having said that, I'll probably watch for a couple of months to see what happens with the other providers, as changing over can cost, but after that I'm quite prepared to change somewhere and become a fully fledged energy whore.
 
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