Archive for March, 2010
Hello from The Utility Blog. Its our intention to give you as much honest and up to date information on what’s happening in the UK utility market and where you should be looking for Cheaper Utility Bills.. What’s hot and what’s not. What deals you should be looking and scams you should avoid like the plague. We will be looking at all the major companies, taking note of their good and bad points, their customer services and any current offers. We will also take time to explore some of the new kids on the block like Betterbills.net and the Utility Warehouse, are they all they are cracked up to be? So in a nutshell where to go to get Cheaper Gas , Cheaper Electricity , Cheaper Broadband and Cheaper Phone bills BUT with one eye on their customer services and one on the best deals we will aim to offer a balanced account of what’s the very best choice. No axe to grind, no spam to push just honest up to date old fashioned advice. If you have any news or details on offers I should know about or new money saving tips I can pass on please feel free to contact me. John Williams (Head Blogger…)
Scottish and Southern Energy will cut its gas bills for domestic customers by 4% from 29 March, the company has announced.
The average annual household bill will drop by £30 as a result, the energy provider said.
The move comes a month after British Gas cut its standard household gas prices by an average of 7%, and others are expected to follow suit.
The changes come after a period of lower wholesale costs.
The company said that its average dual fuel standard credit bill would stand at £1,162, although prices alter depending on where people live in the country.
‘Challenging business’
Scottish and Southern has 3.5 million gas customers but nearly 10 million customers across the UK who use gas or electricity or both. Electricity prices will remain unchanged.
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It supplies gas & electricity as Southern Electric, SWALEC, Scottish Hydro & Atlantic.
Those customers who have relatively low gas usage will not see the full effect of the price cuts. Fixed charges – the initial charge for the first tranche of gas used – will increase from £53 to £98. Prices will be cut for gas used above this level, leaving a net effect of a 4% cut for the average customer.
“Energy supply is still a challenging business, with significant upward price pressures which run counter to reductions in wholesale costs,” said Alistair Phillips-Davies, the company’s energy supply director.
“We will do everything we can to make sure customers get value for money from energy supply, with energy efficiency and customer service continuing to be top priorities.”
The company has also followed demands from the regulator and consumer groups by removing the price differential for pre-payment gas meters.
Pre-payment meter customers will see their annual bill fall by 9%, or £70 a year on average.
“This is a great day for social justice and means that almost 300,000 people, many of whom are on lower incomes, will now find it easier to pay for their energy and heat their homes,” said David Orr, of chief executive of the National Housing Federation.
Single fuel gas rates will fall by 7%, or £56 a year on average, moving single fuel gas prices in line with dual fuel.
Other suppliers
Gas providers have come under pressure to cut bills after prices that they pay on the wholesale markets fell.
The latest moves by Scottish and Southern and British Gas should push the others in the “big six” energy suppliers into cutting prices, according to Tom Lyon, energy expert at price comparison website Uswitch.
“Hopefully the other four will follow shortly, which can only be good for customers,” he said.
“But we will never get back down to levels enjoyed a few years ago.”
The falling prices were still relatively small compared with the increases across the market in 2008, he said, and there was little likelihood of any drop in electricity prices.
Robert Hammond, energy expert at watchdog Consumer Focus said: “This is good news and hopefully will spark the price war that has been conspicuous by its absence since British Gas cut its gas bills last month.
“Wholesale gas and electricity prices have been falling for months and we believe price cuts for both should have been passed on before the winter started.”
But Mark Todd, director of website energyhelpline.com, criticised the delay on the price changes, as British Gas had announced its cut with immediate effect.
He also warned that “some [energy] companies may not cut prices at all even though wholesaleprices have fallen as much as they have”. People in Pubs all over Britain will no doubt be talking about the rip off prices many companies charge and HUGE profits the fat cats are making whilst the rest of the economy struggles along.
Adjusting water heater temperature. Installing insulation blanket on hot water heater and insulating water pipes.
Duration : 0:3:37
Local residents were shocked to learn their local Walmart had an unexpected visitor when a Dragon accidentally got into the store.
Duration : 0:0:16
http://www.car-insurance.tv offer you 12 tips guaranteed to save you money on your car insurance
Duration : 0:3:32
A few money saving tips, I thought I would share with you all.
To order from the Lush UK site: www.lush.co.uk
For further FAQ’s about order from Lush UK: Check out Le Pooke
Her video about this process is really through
Duration : 0:9:57
Why do publicly-owned utilities like municipally-owned electric utilities and cooperatives pay cheaper rates than privately-owned electric companies?
Because there is someone watching the cookie jar instead of a bunch of crooked politicians.
Family movie night is back! Tune in April 16th, 8/7c on NBC for the premiere of Walmart’s first family film, Secrets of the Mountain.
Duration : 0:2:22
Get the Money-Saving Tips You Need for Marketing Your Music Material. Ms Flaire of FabulousRealTalk gives you the secrets you need. These 3 Tips will get you started on the right track to your Music Career. Also, these are great tips for all those interested in marketing whatever they have to offer. Check it out and SUBSCRIBE to Ms Flaire’s Channel at FabulousRealTalk to get the Hook Up!
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Duration : 0:4:18
We lost our internet connection on 24 February 2010. Wednesday night everything was fine and dandy. Thursday we were cut off from the World Wide Web.
We contacted our ISP, (Utility Warehouse), but they couldn’t sort it. Over a week later they claimed the problem was with BT. They still own and manage the lines as we all know.
This is the explanation as I understood it:
British Telecom, who the problem was escalated to, reported that our radius file, (whatever that is), had problems.
Our user names and log ins for broadband were not being recognised by BT’s database.
So they have had to clear the data and put it back on again.
We are now up and running again, but it took till yesterday morning (8 March 2010), to solve – nearly 2 weeks!
In the meantime our business, which is largely reliant on the internet for emails and orders, suffered. Unfortunately all our actual losses could not be quantified, but we are going to claim back our broadband fees for the period we were down. We are also going to claim some sort of compensation for the frustration – whether we get it is another matter.
We were being encouraged to go get a dongle and use mobile broadband but I checked it out for our area and was advised that it would probably be ineffective. It would be worse than dial-up because of the extremely weak signal.
We were also advised to go to a Wifi zone like McDonalds, or go around a friend’s house – this is how BT and UWC see us running a serious business.
We have had problems with BT on several occasions and they are probably the worst people to deal with – they are a crap organisation – if any organisation should be state owned, (i.e. nationalised), British Telecom should.
Anyone else had problems recently?
We are on the North Wales Coast,
Looked at wireless broadband with several networks but the signal is poor so unreliable, (not what you want if you do a lot of internet banking).
We moved away from BT because of the problems of contacting them when you have a problem. We had enough of waiting for ever on hold. At least with UWC we get straight through and having someone else to deal with your problem saves a lot of anger and frustration particularly with the likes of BT.
We are very behind in our location and are awaiting all of the improvements that the cities take for granted.
I just cannot see why the problem took so long to sort out, (nearly 2 weeks).
I had the same problem twice on a Bt connection the first time I was lucky to get a team in the UK it still took him over 2 hours to work out what the problem was. The second time I got arsey and would not do any of the unneeded tests and kept insisting that they send it up to the next leval and it was back on within half an hour,
The problem you are having is with BT not the UWClub as a am assuming you are not on their broadcall service. If you are on a rural exchange BT is mostly the only option
This is not a new problem but one that has been around for years, my thoughts is BT have a bug in their ras server software that has never been fixed
An option is to goto http://www.samknows.com/broadband/search.php find out your exchange and see if anyone has an LLU service on that exchange then BT will only have the line to the exchange to screw up
