An electric shock

When we first moved to our current house, which is ALL electric, I researched the best deal for paying for power and decided that the StayWarm system was a good option.  The criteria were as follows:

• You or someone living in the house is over 60
• Less than 4 people living in the house
• There are no more than 3 bedrooms
• You take both gas and electricity from E.ON StayWarm
• You pay by monthly Direct Debit

We could not use electricity to heat a swimming pool, jacuzzi, sauna, greenhouse or workshop, none of which we intended to do.

The rules at that time stated that we could use as much electricity as we needed!  Woohoo, no worries!!

The ‘set rate’ was not supposed to be based on usage and started to rise slightly each year, which was fair enough and we were happy for around 10 years.  Talking to other people on our small estate it appeared that we had a good deal.

Now, whether StayWarm decided that we pensioners were abusing the rules or just decided to change the rules I don’t know but suddenly the rate quoted for the next year increased dramatically so I called them and asked for a quote for going back to a standard rate.  Bearing in mind that the latest StayWarm quote had been around £110 per month I was very surprised when I was quoted around £20 a month.  I realised that we wouldn’t be able to use as much as electricity as we wanted but, to be fair, we had never really done that, always trying to be thoughtful about our usage.

I queried the new low amount with the adviser at the time and she reassured me that this was the correct rate so I told StayWarm to get lost and changed to a standard rate around October 2012. 

Yesterday I received a letter from EON asking me to ring them urgently which I did only to be told that we had been on the wrong rate for the last 15 months and had been charged at the NIGHT rate instead of the day rate!  The only explanation they could give was that a new system had been installed at EON and when the information was transferred it got in a muddle!  The adviser assured me that we would not be back charged for the difference and the direct debit would not change immediately as we had over £250 worth of credit!

From this week we will be charged at the correct rate – time to turn down the radiators, or maybe time to move house?

The photo has no relevance apart from being the view of the sunrise from the bedroom window.

NB It's now July 2014 and we are still on the low amount!!