[KimS]

Hello, has anyone had an invitation to join the new eon next EV App which professes to allow cheaper and more efficient EV charging using an App?
Eon next are asking us to provide feedback on this if we sign up. I clicked to ‘Find out more’ and found I had signed up!
So, first problem to give feedback on; your website needs attention. I have inadvertently signed up to something I merely wanted more information about.
The new tariff incentivises customers with a £120 credit to your account, whilst increasing an already inflated standing charge on both fuels. Standing charges are a controversial point in my mind anyway, I have asked the question of my MP why my standing charge accounts for a large proportion of my total bill and the reasons for this. I have gone from paying approximately 7p per day on my electricity standing charge to a staggering just over 50p (and that’s just electricity!) How can that be justified? No amount of excuses, and mark my words, they are excuses, can convince me why we are paying these extortionate daily charges. In a cost of living crisis, when people are having to cut down on the basic right to be able to keep warm in their own home, why are we accepting this? You cannot economise when you have a standing charge which amounts to almost a pound a day before you even start to use the fuel.
This post has clearly gone from one subject to an entirely different, but equally important, subject, I do realise. But Eon please, listen to your customers and what they need from their energy companies.
I am fully on board with any way of saving the planet, hence my purchase of an EV and using energy when it is most beneficial to the grid, but if you are going to increase the charges on other aspects, and this includes the increase in the unit price of the gas segment of my bill, you are taking back with one hand what you are giving with the other, in terms of cost to me.

[geoffers]

Originally Posted by KimS

.... increasing an already inflated standing charge on both fuels. Standing charges are a controversial point in my mind anyway, I have asked the question of my MP why my standing charge accounts for a large proportion of my total bill and the reasons for this. I have gone from paying approximately 7p per day on my electricity standing charge to a staggering just over 50p (and that’s just electricity!) How can that be justified?

It's an unfortunate fact of life, since the s/c is there to cover the cost of infrastructure development. And from what I see it is essentially rising to cover the massive costs of the push towards electrification to achieve net zero (including the expensive smart-meter rollout; upgrading the grid to handle the vastly increased power requirements etc etc)

What are the alternatives...?

1. Include it in your bill - you'd probably end up paying more as it would then be hidden, with no way of knowing what the charge actually is.
2. Reduce shareholder profits - unfortunately in our monetary system, companies need to raise money from the markets for large capital investment projects, so investors do expect a reasonable return from lending their money to said companies. (These investors probably include our pension companies so we're all indirectly caught up in this process)
3. Bring the energy companies back into public ownership - money still needs to be raised for capital investment projects, so we'd ultimately end up paying for it in taxes

I expect someone with a better grasp of the economic realities may be able to provide some better alternatives, but it's probably an unavoidable cost which we all have to bear.

[geoffers]

Originally Posted by KimS

.... but if you are going to increase the charges on other aspects, and this includes the increase in the unit price of the gas segment of my bill, you are taking back with one hand what you are giving with the other, in terms of cost to me.

Also - worth noting that if you are a dual fuel customer, you don't have to stick with the Next Drive gas tariff - you can opt for a cheaper one.

I upgraded my Next Drive from V3 to V5, but only the electricity portion since there would have been little saving with the V5 gas tariff increase. So I phoned C.S. to change Electric from V3 to V5, but remained on V3 for gas which saved around £2.50pcm ie. over the whole year around £30 saving

[KimS]

Thanks for the response, I would be agreeable to everything you have said, if I wasn’t very sceptical that the initial reason for those standing charge price rises, were to pay for the energy companies that, through their own bad management and business practices, went bust. Absolutely, there was a worldwide price hike of energy and that is the reason for those smaller companies failing but you cannot just make hay whilst the sun shines in business. It is always the customer who is expected to bail out the failing companies (water companies amongst them) and I’ve had enough of that. Whilst, those very shareholders and bosses cream off the profits.
The government pension schemes need to invest in, what I will loosely call our own utilities, for surely they are not and are being bought up by foreign investors: utilities which are a basic human right. Whilst there is profiteering going on and people are literally dying because they will not/cannot heat their homes, I cannot see how we can sit by and let it continue.
The infrastructure, which is so lacking, has not been invested in for so many years and it will not underpin the proposed changes to our energy needs, I agree, but whilst investment is so tied to shareholders it will not be made a priority will it?
Every time ‘we’, the consumer, has to just stomach it. As I said, I am all for innovation and saving our planet’s resources and it should be top of the agenda but this is not a recent thing. We all know that climate change has been going on for decades. Nett Zero is admirable but it’s the big oil and gas companies that got us in this position in the first place, knowingly promoting their use and conspiring to make us believe we should plunder the earth and it will have no consequence. Money may make the world go round but what happens when that world is depleted?

[KimS]

That’s interesting to learn. I had no idea that was an option!

[geoffers]

Originally Posted by KimS

Nett Zero is admirable but it’s the big oil and gas companies that got us in this position in the first place, knowingly promoting their use and conspiring to make us believe we should plunder the earth and it will have no consequence.

I don't want to get into an argument, but we're all part of the problem - not just big business. The population of the human race is out of control and as the general standard of living increases everyone expects to reap the benefits that we in 1st world countries have grown to assume are our natural rights.

I don't see you foregoing your EV to save the planet - maybe a horse and cart would have been a more equitable purchase 😁

[KimS]

I don’t want an argument either! I think we purchase these recent innovations knowing that’s the best option out there and which makes a little difference on the diesel vehicle, I was lead to believe, would help reduce emissions (not so, I later find out - emissions scandal)
Again, however, hydrogen power which has the capability and has been researched in the past but dismissed, is really the future and would not plunder quite so much of the earth’s precious resources, but where is it? Another question to ponder?!