Another reason to avoid Smart!

[Kot]

Now, if they just charged for exactly what you use with smart meters, instead of holding on to your money and earning interest in their bank account... I see little advantage in getting a smart meter, especially as they charge the government £450 per meter install.

I want a SM but Scottish Power can’t supply me with One, been waiting 2 months! Still no appointments
But Even without a SM they have accumulated over £1000 of my cash even after manual readings sent online every month, it’s because their DD algorithm is wrong, even on my dashboard They want me to increase my DD because they don’t have a years usage rate from me yet having being transferred from a failed company. Impossible to lower my DD online and even more impossible to speak or chat with someone. Now there are no deals and forced onto standard rate, why do we need to pay in advance why not back to the old way where you pay in full at the EOM?
DD should be aligned to SM monthly consumption reading or manual reading
It’s really that simple we are being held hostage

 

[binky]

Basically it is not "Smart Meters" that is the fundamental problem..
It IS "Dumb Customers"!

Dumb customers, but also dumb suppliers.

When we bought our house 17 years ago it had a keymeter, which we got changed asap. Took about a month. Sometime later we got a bill for £2k, WTF! The most you could be in debt with a key meter at the time was £5. The previous owners had left 2 keys, and it turns out we had being using the wrong one for the period upto getting a normal meter installed. So we had paid, and the supplier needed to reclaim the money from BG. It took over a year to sort that out with numerous phone calls from the supplier saying we owed them money we couldn't possibly have owed because it's all prepaid.

More recently our current supplier wanted to increase our standing order despite being £600 in credit. About 10 phone calls later, we finally got them to agree we would stop the SO for a few months rather than have them send us a cheque for the 'saved' money, which is more than enough to cover winter as we are low energy users. We are also on a fixed tariff for the next few years, so it wasn't like our bills would suddenly shoot up.

 

[Murdoch]

I want a SM but Scottish Power can’t supply me with One, been waiting 2 months! Still no appointments
But Even without a SM they have accumulated over £1000 of my cash even after manual readings sent online every month, it’s because their DD algorithm is wrong, even on my dashboard They want me to increase my DD because they don’t have a years usage rate from me yet having being transferred from a failed company. Impossible to lower my DD online and even more impossible to speak or chat with someone. Now there are no deals and forced onto standard rate, why do we need to pay in advance why not back to the old way where you pay in full at the EOM?
DD should be aligned to SM monthly consumption reading or manual reading
It’s really that simple we are being held hostage

Write to the CEO of Scottish Power.

And as for "being forced onto standard rates" - you do realise that there are NO deals as long as the cap in in place?

Martin Lewis said on Tuesday that you should have 2 months DD payments in your account as you go into winter - I think this is too low, given how heating is the biggest expense on our bills. We're about 3 months in credit (deliberately) and I'm happy with that. Our provider wants us to increase the DD, but I'll only do that when my spreadsheet & calculations suggest I need to

 

[binky]

Write to the CEO of Scottish Power.

And as for "being forced onto standard rates" - you do realise that there are NO deals as long as the cap in in place?

Martin Lewis said on Tuesday that you should have 2 months DD payments in your account as you go into winter - I think this is too low, given how heating is the biggest expense on our bills. We're about 3 months in credit (deliberately) and I'm happy with that. Our provider wants us to increase the DD, but I'll only do that when my spreadsheet & calculations suggest I need to

We've decided to run the house cooler this winter, although the weather persists on being unusually warm. We installed woodburners years ago, and bought our logs in April before all the prices shot up. In reality it's cheaper to burn gas than logs, but it does allow us to heat only the room we are using ie the lounge, rather than the whole house. Kitchen gets heated by cooking. Plus we have always liked a real fire and wood is carbon neutral.

 

[Murdoch]

We've decided to run the house cooler this winter, although the weather persists on being unusually warm. We installed woodburners years ago, and bought our logs in April before all the prices shot up. In reality it's cheaper to burn gas than logs, but it does allow us to heat only the room we are using ie the lounge, rather than the whole house. Kitchen gets heated by cooking. Plus we have always liked a real fire and wood is carbon neutral.

We've always run our house "cooler" and we too have a log burner - and have yet had to buy any wood We find it takes about 2 hours to heat our house completely using the burner, but its not cold enough yet to justify lighting it.

With PV, sunny days help too

 

[apprentice87]

You have to live within your means, I went through a very rough patch 15 years ago, nearly lost my house and almost bankrupt. I had to cut back on everything including energy but I didnt have any bailouts from the government or expect free energy. I cut cloth according to my means and very slowly dug myself out of a massive hole.
If they cant afford the inflated prices, theyre using too much, it's a fairly simple thing understand, they have to cut down their usage, use what they do more efficiently etc. Why should I have to bail them out?
The energy companies are the ones that should be doing something to bring prices down, a windfall tax on their excessive profits would be a start but the real answer is all of our infrastructure, Generation, Distribution, Rail, Comms, Gas etc should be nationalised. The government could then control energy costs directly.

15 years ago you were not paying 38p a unit either

 

[johnb2713]

15 years ago you were not paying 38p a unit either

Absolutely not, wages weren't as high as they are now either so what is your point?

 

[BorisJ]

I want a SM but Scottish Power can’t supply me with One, been waiting 2 months! Still no appointments
But Even without a SM they have accumulated over £1000 of my cash even after manual readings sent online every month, it’s because their DD algorithm is wrong, even on my dashboard They want me to increase my DD because they don’t have a years usage rate from me yet having being transferred from a failed company. Impossible to lower my DD online and even more impossible to speak or chat with someone. Now there are no deals and forced onto standard rate, why do we need to pay in advance why not back to the old way where you pay in full at the EOM?
DD should be aligned to SM monthly consumption reading or manual reading
It’s really that simple we are being held hostage

Ask your bank to stop the DD, simples. Once the £1K is used up start a new one.

 

[BorisJ]

Plus we have always liked a real fire and wood is carbon neutral.

Another lie put out by dumb people. If wood was carbon neutral then gas, coal, and other fossil fuels would be for the same reasons.

 

[Murdoch]

Ask your bank to stop the DD, simples. Once the £1K is used up start a new one.

Which will increase your unit rate

 

[ProDave]

Switch to a decent supplier. I recommend Octopus, you have control over the DD amount on line, if there is too much credit you can request some is repaid to you, and you can get to speak to someone if you need to. And you DON'T need a smart meter for any of that.

If you want to switch PM me for a referal code to get £50 credit when you switch.

 

[johnb2713]

Switch to a decent supplier. I recommend Octopus, you have control over the DD amount on line, if there is too much credit you can request some is repaid to you, and you can get to speak to someone if you need to. And you DON'T need a smart meter for any of that.

If you want to switch PM me for a referal code to get £50 credit when you switch.

Another recommendation for Octopus here, their customer services is sometimes slow to respond but theyre a great supplier.

 

[Mike.J]

We keep hearing about a windfall tax on energy companies and accept this as a good thing, BUT who is going to benefit from this tax, bet your life it will not be the consumer.

 

[binky]

Another lie put out by dumb people. If wood was carbon neutral then gas, coal, and other fossil fuels would be for the same reasons.

Drivel, you grow a tree, it absorbs carbon, you burn it it releases carbon which can be directly compensated for by growing another tree, and the faster growing trees have an approximatley 50-70 year cycle, where as coal , oil and gas are the compressed rotted remains of tillions of trees and other plants that lived millions of years ago, so burning these fuels is releasing carbon stored for millions of years, and which will therefore take millions of years to replace as a life cycle of carbon storage. That's what's mucking the planet up in case you hadn't noticed, or are you one of these dumb prats that believes 40 deg C is a normal summer in the uK?

 

[johnb2713]

We keep hearing about a windfall tax on energy companies and accept this as a good thing, BUT who is going to benefit from this tax, bet your life it will not be the consumer.

Just out of interest, what do you think the government do with taxes they collect? share it out amongst themselves perhaps? or maybe spend it in the country where we, the consumer will benefit in one way or another.

 

[binky]

Just out of interest, what do you think the government do with taxes they collect? share it out amongst themselves perhaps? or maybe spend it in the country where we, the consumer will benefit in one way or another.

have parties at Downing st .

This is the rub of what I think is wrong with the UK for the last 30-40 years. People seem to love the idea of low taxation, but then want the best services possible and moan like F when they aren't very good. However, every time I look at privatised services v public services, it would seem public ownership actually works out cheaper than trying to sort things out for yourself, or outsourcing to some half baked company that's only cheaper becuase they employ muppets. 2 Classic cases in point were hospital cleaning, where the contractors didn't clean the walls, like blood doesn't spurt in all directions, and railway maintenance, that resulted in 3 major rail crashes killing quite a few people. That has been brought back under public control via Network rail. False economies!

 

[Murdoch]

I’m all for paying more in tax and NI

 

[ProDave]

Drivel, you grow a tree, it absorbs carbon, you burn it it releases carbon which can be directly compensated for by growing another tree, and the faster growing trees have an approximatley 50-70 year cycle, where as coal , oil and gas are the compressed rotted remains of tillions of trees and other plants that lived millions of years ago, so burning these fuels is releasing carbon stored for millions of years, and which will therefore take millions of years to replace as a life cycle of carbon storage. That's what's ******* the planet up in case you hadn't noticed, or are you one of these dumb prats that believes 40 deg C is a normal summer in the uK?

I must disagree. I am afraid what you describe is "greenwash"

Burning anything that sends CO2 up the chimney is bad. The atmosphere cannot tell any difference between CO2 from wood (good) and CO2 from coal (bad) It all has the same effect.

Take DRAX. It burns wood. A LOT of wood. It it claimes to be carbon neutral. I don't swallow that. To feed DRAX lots of trees are being cut down and most of them transported a LONG way. No problem you say, we plant more trees to replace them. BUT the new trees take years to grow, so you immediately release the carbon from the felled trees and it takes many years to remove that carbon again.

It would actually be better to burn coal, do not cut down all those trees AND plant lots of new ones.

The one thing that annoys me about the environmentalists, is they bang on we need renewable power and we must stop burning fossil fuel NOW. I agree we need more renewable power, but they way they bang on, suggests they believe we could if we chose, stop burning fossil fuel right now and switch to completely renewable right now. Not possible. We are going as fast as we can. But nobody stands up to the environmentalists and say to them, we are going as fast as we can towards renewable energy, your protests won't make it happen any quicker.

 

[binky]

I must disagree. I am afraid what you describe is "greenwash"

Burning anything that sends CO2 up the chimney is bad. The atmosphere cannot tell any difference between CO2 from wood (good) and CO2 from coal (bad) It all has the same effect.

Take DRAX. It burns wood. A LOT of wood. It it claimes to be carbon neutral. I don't swallow that. To feed DRAX lots of trees are being cut down and most of them transported a LONG way. No problem you say, we plant more trees to replace them. BUT the new trees take years to grow, so you immediately release the carbon from the felled trees and it takes many years to remove that carbon again.

It would actually be better to burn coal, do not cut down all those trees AND plant lots of new ones.

The one thing that annoys me about the environmentalists, is they bang on we need renewable power and we must stop burning fossil fuel NOW. I agree we need more renewable power, but they way they bang on, suggests they believe we could if we chose, stop burning fossil fuel right now and switch to completely renewable right now. Not possible. We are going as fast as we can. But nobody stands up to the environmentalists and say to them, we are going as fast as we can towards renewable energy, your protests won't make it happen any quicker.

DRAX is a bad example, but it was originally designed to burn bio mass, stuff like elephant grass. Burning coal doesn't just release CO2, but a shit load of other pollution, remember acid rain? Plus the energy to mine and transport coal is far higher than cutting down a tree, or drilling for oil and gas. How much energy goes into building an oil rig and the supply pipelines or a gas ship? And how far do we transport oil and gas as opposed to trees. I also pointed out the cycle is about 50 years, but growing trees absorbs lots of CO2 every year of it's life, as well as providing bio diversity if done right

As for going as fast as we can, if only that was the truth. Sad fact is environmentalists have been banging on about this for decades, even George Bush stood on a platform for election citing climate change as a major issue. BUT, the oil industry started it's 'black ops' program to smear the environmental lobby and put us back decades to make more money at the expense of the planet and our children's futures. Hundreds of thousands of people will die as a result, possibly millions, as a result of drought, floods, and food shortages, and resulting wars over resources. If we had started down the green energy route then, we would not have a problem now, same as stopping the hole in the ozone layer was achieved in around 20 years.

Greenwash, you've been reading too much oilwash!

 

[johnb2713]

I think Binky's log burner is fine, the net result if a tree is planted for every tree burned will be around carbon neutral give or take. There are some issues with particulates if the burner isnt operating correctly and an issue if the moisture content of the wood is high.
it's amazing if you think back to the 50's and 60's we had steam trains, diesel vehicles, coal fired power stations, coal burning to heat out homes and we were apparently healthier, not so many cases of asthma and other respiratory problems etc.
Greenpeace were campaigners against the oil industry stating oil rigs were destroying sea life, I can tell you from first-hand experience every oil rig in the North Sea is an absolute haven for sea life. People don't take the bigger picture into account, the overall impact on what we do. We have no idea if our climate change is a 500 year natural cycle or if it really is man-made. The area of the world is huge compared to the miniscule area and impact mankind can make, I find it hard to accept were destroying our environment at the rate claimed. I really dont think Binky chucking a log on the fire will make a dramatic difference, so for me, stick that log on there, pour yourself a drink and put your feet up. Forget greenwash and oil wash and enjoy the flicker of the flame and the smell of burning wood with the amazing heat it creates.