Standing charges!!!

[Workingman]

I received an email over the weekend from Scottish Power informing me that the electricity standing charge is going up in April from 54.58 pence to 60.70 pence per day. That is an increase of 11.2%. How can this be justified?

Coupled with the gas standing charge, which will also go up, it will mean that I will be paying about £6.80 per week before using any energy. Talk about a rip-off. On some days in summer that standing charge is more than all the energy used.

[saundra]

Haven't got my email yet where will it end and as I said on random thread tv licen up to£172 disgusting

[TheOstrich]

I think EonNext have said the standing charge is going up, but the usage charge is going down?

[cruiser2]

Saw an article which said the increadse in standing charges is to payfor the mdebt of eenergy firms who have gone bust and ben taken ove by larger comanies.
Talk abouta win/win situation.
If ther small energy companies have gone bankrupt they should go through the normal bankrupt system. I know everybody needs gas and electricity for
heating and lighting. But why should their loss be passed onto other firms and customers?

It does not happen with other industries or small shoppkeepers.

[cromwell]

Robdogs.

[Suff]

We got slammed with 15% at the end of Feb. EDF government plan.

I had done nothing about changing plans to these weird and wonderful plans that arrived with all the "renewable" energy. They got hammered with 50% increases last year but the government locked base plans didn't move. I guess I've saved more than any possible gain I might have made from these plans by simply not trying to make my energy bill lower.

When the government puts in caps and companies are losing money on the energy, then you have to expect that they will follow the caps with a price rise every single time they can. I didn't notice anyone crying for the energy companies when they were paying 10x the price for the gas we were using. Just concern that the price didn't go up.

Now we should expect that those 10x price rises will come back, over and over again, until the companies have dumped the losses and made a profit.

Of course then they will squeeze you dry. But that is in the nature of energy companies. When we went wood burning for heat we took a decision that we would not go gas. We didn't want to be in the control of the gas suppliers when we had a choice. No choice with electric was bad enough.

That decision came back to reward us. Our wood supplier put his prices up 0.5%.