Don't pay high energy prices protest

[Gmamaofboys13]

Drawing MN users attention to a campaign where 1 million people cancel their direct debits on the 1st of October as a protest against the high energy prices:

dontpay.uk/

KettrickenSmiled
The French tax problem will still be picking up the bill for their government’s actions,
depends on what you call poverty, no heating in the house apart from a coal fire, single glassed windows, scraping ice of the inside in the winter, no car, but hey you job to conclusions

Funnily enough countries like France have managed to keep bills low and their increase is about 4%. Why? because utilities are in public ownership and their politicians know full well people would take to the streets if they tried what is happening here.

Its actually primarily because considerably more French electricity comes from Nuclear Power stations (70%) than in the UK (less than 20%). We are far more dependent on fossil fuels

Actually, a big chunk of the energy crisis in Europe now is precisely because they have two dozen reactors offline due to poor condition. This means the Germans and others have to burn more coal and gas to offset the losses from France’s antiquated nuke fleet (the low river flow and high temperatures of said river don’t help either).

Hello! Absolutely - you will need to go via your provider first, who will obviously not uphold the complaint

Any company that is regulated by the FCA can have already raised complaints forwarded to the Ombudsman (FOS). This costs energy providers up to £400 per complaint, whether the FOS uphold the complaint or not.

During this time, they are NOT allowed to take any debt collective action on your account. The bill essentially gets put on pause whilst they investigate the complaint. For the purposes of this exercise, let's use British Gas as the example. BG will come back and offer you discount after discount after discount, wanting you to essentially close the complaint - do NOT do this! Keep the complaint open.

BG will get hit with an even bigger fine if they have too many complaints open. The general complaint fee, plus the enormous fine with too many complaints open will cost them too much money, too much time. This will also put them in breach of their licensing conditions and put their ability to trade at risk (yeah we know not much of a risk!) but this is a better way of protesting than just not paying altogether, if you can.

Sorry but I do not think you have a good grasp of some basics here. The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) regulates only financial services (so banking, insurance). It does not consider complaints about energy costs.

Oh, you're a goady little fucker aren't you.

My point is that everyone I have seen who is getting behind this in real life can comfortably afford to pay an increase to their bills. They have a lot of disposable income and simply aren't prepared to sacrifice their luxuries but will happily refuse to pay for the energy they've used.

I think it cheapens this movement.

'it’s time to cut down on holidays, eating out, takeaways, subscription TV, Amazon prime, new phone, stop tumble drying, wear more clothes indoors, etc, pay your essentials first.'

Yep, I'll tell the families I see at Foodbank that. They just haven't thought through

Mangolist
Good, because someone needs to tell them, most of them around me seem to have all these items and more

A lot of people won’t be able to afford their energy bills when they end up being as high as their rent or mortgage payments. Even the UN had called on Governments to impose windfall taxes on them now. It’s getting beyond ridiculous. There is a whole load of profiteering going. I bet there are some hedge fund managers out there rubbing their hands together and waiting for the money to start rolling in. The rich will be getting richer off the back of ruined lives and peoples’ misery.

The militant in me likes the idea of this but it's really not been thought out. Basically they're neglecting the sad fact that millions simply won't be able to afford the increased bills in the first place. They may well end up cancelling their direct debits, but purely because they can't have all of their money taken out of the account with nothing left for other bills.

I'm lucky enough to be able to absorb some of this and so my protest will come in the form of less spending on everything else. It's a sad state of affairs as the high street and economy in general will suffer.

I've already read an article today saying that the high street is seeing fewer people spending money. After October it'll be like lockdown again. Depressing.

The likes of BP won't make some massive profit by the end of the year due to writing off their Russian assets.

To cover the increase in energy bills for the next two years would be on the order of £100bn+ depending on where you draw the price cap line (April's or August's) and if every household gets it out of the 28 million or so.

If you seriously think oil and gas executives are making off to a tenth of a trillion pounds, I've got a bridge to sell you.

Incidentally, that money they do rake in is likely a one off event if the global economy collapses, and with it, the CAPEX for getting us out of this situation. Because without investment in the mid- to long term, we'll be paying FAR more in the near future than what we'll pay next year.

Additionally, subsidising consumption is the dumbest thing people in power could do now. Do they think they can buy more gas than exists if we give everyone a tax break?

People need to wake up and actually read a physics and economics book sometime instead of assuming this is profiteering. Like suddenly shutting down 40% of Europe's energy means prices won't be affected? What the fuck?

Because without investment in the mid- to long term, we'll be paying FAR more in the near future than what we'll pay next year.

Exactly. Also why should the UN be meddling with individual governments' tax decisions?

I’m pretty sure that £400 figure is a back of the envelope calculation as to the cost of the time to generate a response. It won’t cost £400 per response if they get duplicate complaints. They’ll only have to generate 1 generic response and tell the Ombudsman that it applies to all complaints about the high gas and electric prices.

My DH’s very large employer is ditching a U.K. energy firm in favour of EDF because EDF is the cheapest.