Good about a year ago, the price of my gas and electricity went down but my standing charge went up enough that I ended up paying more. Then again, I’m sure they’ll just find another way to screw you.
Of course they will, this is definitely a step in the right direction, but I’m not fooling myself into thinking what ever tariff they conjure up is going to be substantially cheaper.
Energy provision should never be for-profit, it should offer what is a necessity for people at the markets unit prices plus any maintenance/development on top.
Would the ‘maintenance/development on top’ not be called profit?
No, non-profits still have overheads such as fixing their buildings they run out of and if they provide a service then building additional infrastructure to provide more of it.
That is not profit.
Profit is charging more than your costs so that you have a positive balance afterwards outside of the overheads which can be withdrawn.
No. Profit is what’s left after all costs have been accounted for.
When I say profit I mean money going to shareholders. The money made should be kept within the business (where possible) to fund its maintenance and development.
I remember when my energy company went public. Literally the next bill was double. Supposedly they separated the delivery charge and a few other charges from the energy usage, at least that’s what they told me. I had several computers running 24/7 and it was costing more to GET the power than I was using. Then a few years later they decided to do “time-of-use” billing with 3 different charges depending on time of day. Yeah, they will screw you at every opportunity
Can someone explain this, I don’t get it.
Currently with energy suppliers we have to pay two charges:
- A charge for each unit of gas/electric used
- A “standing charge” - a bullshit charge applied daily. The companies claim it is a charge for the service of giving us said energy
The goal of this is to get rid of the standing charge as for example if someone is on holiday with no appliances running they are still being charged. It will in theory benefit those who try to limit their energy usage as much as possible. But energy companies will figure something out to avoid losing money from this.
So for someone like me that uses a consistent amount of energy per day, what is the benefit?
If the amount of energy you use is consistently reasonably low, then you are paying more per unit of energy than someone who uses a large amount of energy.l because of the standing charge.
If the standing charge is removed, then users with low energy consumption would pay less, users with high energy consumption would pay more, and the energy companies would make the same amount overall (assuming they don’t use the opportunity to increase revenue)
They will implement it in a way that makes 99% of prople worse off so no one takes it up and they can “prove” it’s not wanted.
