Non-Commodity Charges

It's not terrible Clive, and presumably, you aren't using much at the moment. Did you read all 100 pages of small print?

As I read it, the price of the electricity is fixed, but the price of delivering it to you is not. Because usage has gone down, the cost of infrastructure per kWh has risen and that is what they are passing on.

As a result of the Governments drive to "simplify tariffs" all the tariffs with high per kWh charge and low or zero standing charge have gone.

My brother's bill for a supply to a detached garage has gone from about £5 per year to over £50.

If this is what is meant by simplifying charges, I don't want it.

I think Robin Hood (RIP) was the last company to offer a zero standing charge tariff.

I think I fell asleep when I was reading the small print! So my fault there, although I would likely not have considered it...


I think that we are in the second year of a 4-year contract for both electricity and gas.  This notification is just for electricity, so will be interesting whether we receive a similar letter for the gas supply based on the same argument. 

Clive

When the contract was signed you should have received a separate "Statement of Principal Terms" which is a short simple plain English document that lists the main contract terms.  Price variation of this sort should have been on the document.  This is a separate document to the main contract terms.

If either you didn't get the document or price variation wasn't on it then I think you have grounds to ask for the price increase to be disapplied.

Thanks for that statter.  The letter refers to being on a standard "Choice" contract, whilst our contract is headed: SSE - Electricity Matrix Contract.  Looking on SSE's website, they currently have a "SSE Choice" contract where Non-commodity costs are not fixed and "SSE Protect" contracts where prices are fully fixed. 

So far I have not found the word Matrix in the T&Cs attached to the contract.

Will be emailing SSE in the next day or so.

Clive