OMG... I've just had my new fuel quote

[listsandbudgets]

£10650 a year!!!

We currently pay about £200 a month - big old house with quite a lot of people in and out so thats not unreasonable but this is astronomical

What the fu*k....

It's over a third of my annual pre-tax income.

They are going to have people on the streets

In shock

I agree with posters who’ve mentioned OVO. I’m impressed with their recent emails and how they have very clearly worked out how much extra we need to pay on our dd for dual fuel bills. The graphs showing our usage and clear pricing has helped us see where we could change a few practices in our house.
Though to be fair, we are in a very small modern mid terrace, young pensioners with no children at home and currently in good health so we have only a small increase so far.
Im very very concerned for the lowish income families with children in our family and will be doing all I can to help out.
Im very sorry it’s such a worry for so many of you .

I put my figures into the Which calculator and it shows my current figure £131 going up to £439 by April!! I also looked at Utility Warehouse and they’ve offered me a deal at £135. I’m not sure what the terms are as I can’t look at how long the fix is without accepting the quote. It seems unrealistically low though given the predicted rises. My parents are with them and have had no issues although I know they aren’t that popular with Martin Lewis. I’m wondering if there is a catch somewhere.

With Utility Warehouse you need to take other products alongside gas/electricity so it will be the other products that are reducing the energy costs. Its just not for me

If you go through their website you can get a full breakdown. I think because of the extra products it's unlikely to be a good option for lower users. But for high users then the cost of the extras can be dwarfed by the potential savings. It's pretty niche as a result but there are people it works for.

You are right but you are wasting your time.

There are dozens of threads like this where people don't understand the difference between their direct debit and their unit tarrif, nor are they able to do even the most basic maths to work out how much the new prices are going to cost them.

There are even people who seem to think a fixed tariff means they can use as much fuel as they want and it won't cost any more, like an all you can eat buffet.

Some of the ideas, turning off fridge freezers for 12 hours a day, leaving food outside to save using the fridge, only eating cold meals to save using the cooker, disconnecting entirely from the grid to save paying standard charges, taking wood from other people's land as "it's just lying around" all bonkers.

I was talking with a pensioner neighbour, he was complaining (in a jokey way) that ,for once, he was going to have to spend his winter fuel allowance on fuel!

There will be pensioners die this winter because they have read all the near hysteria on the internet and are scared to use their heating. Some will have thousands in the bank.

@dementedpixie just had a look and they do an energy only tariff, you save more if you take additional products but as I’ve just renewed my broadband and mobile contract the only thing I would be interested in would be the boiler cover.

@dementedpixie but having read the t&c it isn’t a fixed deal, the price will increase in Oct. Bit sneaky as it wasn’t that clear it wasn’t a fixed deal but a standard capped rate.

You only get the fixed deal if you take 3 or 4 of the products. Otherwise its just a small reduction off the standard variable rate

Yes it's only the fix which is worth having, which you have to take two other products to access. Cheapest are a £12 sim and an £18 boiler/pipe etc insurance and servicing product. Total cost £360 per year.

My calcs for my mum in law, taking in to account the predicted rises in Jan and April, that she'd spend £10500 on a normal variable rate. It was about 8000 on the UW fix. So even once I factored in paying £360 for shit she didn't need it still saves her about £2150 per year based on projected prices. That maths won't work for low users as the £360 extra cost will outweigh the benefits.

UW was only slightly cheaper than the octopus deal fix we were offered (£559 UW, £597 octopus). But UW has a £150 exit fee

@gogohmm’s energy saving measures are perfectly sensible and not a waste of time at all @Nolongera ! She’s ensuring she’s making the most of the heat she’s paid for. We should all be doing that FGS!

If you have a fix from Octopus I'd probably take it too - lots of suppliers (Shell in this case) aren't offering anything fixed at all.

That's not what @Nolongera is saying, @Dontfuckingsaycheese, (s)he's saying that so few people appear to understand their bills / how they're charged, that there's very little point trying to help them. (S)he clearly says 'You're right, but...'.

It will go from £250 to £597 tho and it would only be £440 in Oct. Whether to save and prepare for £700 in Jan or fix and pay over the odds!

It's obvious I was agreeing with @gogohmm's post. The bit where I said " You are right".

How you drew another conclusion from my post is beyond me.

Still, a clear example of how reason has become lost in the madness of he energy threads on here.

It is very high.

@geojellyfish do you have a lot of fridges and freezers? We did an energy audit back in April and were horrified to find ours constituted 28.5% of our very hefty bills. ( The number had crept up over the years). Decommissioning some will knock 10% off our annual bill. It's a good starting point, but seriously it's worth doing a check and working out where your energy is going.

Sorry @geojellyfish , that should have been to @Powaqa .

If you can't pay then you can't pay. No point companies taking the threatening stance of fear. If the money isn't there then they can't have it.

If you don't pay then you will be put on prepayment meters with additional charges to recover the debt.

You won't be cut off by the supplier, effectively you will be cutting yourself off when you don't put money into your prepayment account.

The thing is that they can force people onto prepay meters (remotely in the case of newish meters) then for every £10 you top up with, they take £9 towards your debt, leaving you with £1 of credit.

This is what awaits all those who say they ‘wont pay’ ( through choice not because they can’t - there is help for those in genuine fuel debt)

There you go - in the Times tomorrow- plan is to freeze bills by spending billions.

This will add to inflation and devalue the £ so imports/holidays will be more expensive but it's needed. Seems to cover both business and the public.

The reason they're doing this is so the economy doesn't crash. If there was no action spend in shops would dry up, businesses go to the wall, unemployment spikes and it's a bigger problem.

Fingers crossed it's enough but it's a sad day for the £. It will take decades to balance the books.

Only if you don't pay anything AT ALL towards your bills will they do that.
Set your direct debit, or pay as much as you can towards your bill, cut back where you can, that's all anyone can do.

Keep making regular payments, yes you might be in debt to your supplier, but they won't put you on a prepayment meter.

@5thCommandment will this help every household? We are both working but cannot afford the £700 energy bill predicted

Dh has been predicting this for months. I have brushed him off but I believe it now, sometime in late October/November when it starts getting cold and really kicks in

Our recommended direct debit by April is £700 a month. More than our mortgage council tax WiFi and car insurance combined, we can't afford it even if we both got second jobs or did a boat load of overtime (we've got 2 DC that would need childcare for that anyway). We are just over the threshold for universal credit and no amount of cutbacks will allow us to afford the bill (we already hardly ever use the tumble drier, heating only if it's absolutely freezing etc etc). I'm not sure what we're going to do really