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Screwed by Npower

This is a cry for help and information!  (All gratefully received.)  It’s not going to be my most exciting blog post, but it will be, I suspect, on a theme to which we are all familiar…

So as we all know, energy and gas companies screw us over.  You look at your ever-rising bills, you look at the ever-rising profits of the companies and the uncanny ability they have to always raise prices in time for winter… and yeah, we’re screwed.  And angry.

But over the last few months there has been a campaign to ‘simplify’ energy tariffs.  The government has harped on at great lengths about this.  I mean, hell, they’re not actually making things cheaper for us, just simpler – in the same way that it’ll be ‘simpler’ for GPs to decide spending, oh yes, but anyway, different rant.

So I’ve received a letter detailing my new, ‘simple’ tariff from NPower, and in it, metre readings based on my daily usage have gone out of the window and instead I must pay a daily standing charge for what I receive, totalling over £210 a year.  AS WELL as my standard metre readings.

Now, I am a woman who goes out of my way not to use much gas and electricity.  I turn lights off, never leave things on standby, go out of my way to minimise my use of hot water and make things as energy efficient as possible.  My average monthly combined gas and electricity bill is around £20 regardless of the time of year.  The addition of these standing charges has effectively doubled what I will pay in the year – all in the interest of ‘making things simple’.

To put it bluntly, I am being screwed because I try and be efficient.

And I’m sure I’m not the only one.