[theunknowntech]

And what happens when literally every energy supplier collapses due to pointless stunts like mass non-payment? Then what do you do? Or perhaps the tens of thousands of jobs that could be put at risk if said suppliers collapse?

You do have to consider it from all sides!

[Karln]

@theunknowntech

The best way to do this is as follows.

DO NOT refuse to pay your energy bill in October.
Below is how you can make a stand and hurt your energy supplier without getting into debt/damaging your credit rating:
1. Cancel your DD & pay for what you use each month.
2. You then need to write a letter of complaint to your energy supplier.
Once that complaint had been raised, your energy supplier can't take any debt collection work on your account, so they can't pass your details to the credit reference agencies etc.
That bill gets put on hold whilst they try to resolve your complaint. The energy company might offer you a small reduction - DON'T accept it. Keep the complaint open & hold strong.
3. Eventually, they will send you a letter of 'Deadlock'. A letter of Deadlock is a letter that is sent to you from your energy company saying they gone as far as they can with your complaint & can't go any further, so your only option now is to take it up with the energy Ombudsman. For every complaint the Ombudsman receives, they charge your energy supplier £500 for every claim they have to investigate.
4. The energy companies also have limitations on how many complaints they're allowed open as well as a turnaround time of how fast they have to respond to a complaint & get a complaint closed.
If they don't respond to them fast enough & don't resolve the complaints or they have too many complaints open, the energy firm will also get hit with a fine from the Ombudsman.
This is how your hurt an energy company.
This will also put them in breach of their licensing conditions & put their ability to trade at risk.
So if you want to fight these extortionate price hikes
1. Raise complaints
2. Do NOT close them
3. Take them to the Ombudsman You can also submit a “subject access request” at the same time as the above.
This means the energy company has a legal obligation to provide you with every piece of information they have on you; including telephone conversation transcripts, past bills, everything!
This is time consuming for them to collect and is a huge hassle for them however they legally have only one month to comply.
Edit: the accompanying graphic contains a quote from Martin Lewis. This was taken from an article by Tyla.
The written content of this post was taken from a commentator on the Tyla article.
I thought others would find it useful so I made this post public on facebook.

[theunknowntech]

Oh, and this is probably also a good time to mention that suppliers are allowed to recover ALL relevant costs from the customer if an account goes to debt collection. Don't risk it.

[meldrewreborn]

Originally Posted by Karln

So
Who else is joining the Don`t Pay campaign this Autumn?

I am because I am sick to death of been over charged for energy while the energy companies flaunt and rub our noses in the massive profits they make ever quarter.

Nobody likes the high prices but you are misguided in your thinking. So BP and Shell have reported massive profits - that because they're primarily oil companies operating worldwide benefitting from high oil prices and are not substantial domestic energy suppliers. Centrica reported higher profits because its a gas company with gas fields and gas prices are high. The British Gas side operating domestically reported normal levels of profit.

Electricity generators using wind, solar, nuclear, biomass and hydro are making windfall profits at the moment and they sell into the wholesale market. They do directly supply the home energy market. And currently the energy suppliers for the domestic market (who buy their supplies from the wholesale market) are making losses because the price levels allowed by the price cap are still too low compared to the prices in the wholesale market today. energy prices for businesses are much higher than the domestic price caps.

We'd all like not to have to pay but i think most of us would like to keep the lights on and our homes as warm as we can afford this winter, and for all time.

If you want to protest then i suggest you start in Moscow and then Saudi Arabia. See how far you get with them.

[theunknowntech]

Indeed. And regardless of how big any deliberate non-payment protest is, you're still liable to pay what you owe anyway. Even if it takes a few months for the collections teams at all suppliers to catch up, trust me - they WILL catch up and chase you for payment. The early stages of the process are automated anyway and those stages will just continue to run as normal regardless.

It's not a case of if you get caught, but more a case of when you get caught.

[theunknowntech]

Oh and I forgot to say this earlier, but better late than never.

If you think a stunt like this will cause energy suppliers to breach license conditions, news flash! It won't. Both Ofgem and the Energy Ombudsman considers multiple factors and as I understand things, automatically disregards any complaints that turn out to be:

• Malicious
• Fake
• Spam
• Not from a legitimate customer
• Not from a customer that the supplier referred to in the complaint has ever supplied anything to
• Sent en-masse by spambots
• Deliberately trying to get the supplier in trouble
• Have little to no merit
• Out of scope e.g. complaining to the energy ombudsman for stuff that should have gone to the financial ombudsman

A stunt like don't pay will merely bump up the kill count for complaints that were rejected as invalid. If after all that filtering, the stats are within the permitted thresholds, then nothing else happens. No fine, no penalty, no enforcement... Just business as usual.

[Anasa_EONNext]

@Karln The 90's poll tax strike was a success in the 90's but you have to remember that this was a law that was being imposed on us directly by the government where as with your energy provider you essentially have a private law agreement, which means that if you don't pay for the goods and services provided a court will have no difficulty in finding in favour of a business. You mentioned that the main reason why you're taking part in the strike is because of your email's weren't replied to so perhaps there is another way for you to express your dissatisfaction, please reach out if you have any more queries or concerns about your account.

You also mentioned that raising complaints is the best way to hurt a supplier, if a complaint is raised about price increases this complaint will be automatically closed as a business decision it won't be passed onto the Ombudsman, complaints will only be upheld if we have done something wrong that we can and need to fix 😊

[Karln]

So... let me get this straight:
* British Gas made a profit of £1.3bn between January & June
* BP announced profits of £6.95 billion between April and June alone
* Shell has profited by £9.4bn in a year The people at the top:
* John Pettigrew, boss of National Grid received £6.5m bonus on top of his salary
* Chris O’Shea, chief executive of British Gas owner Centrica was paid almost £2m last year in salary and benefits
* Centrica's non-executive directors were paid almost £1m
* Scottish Power's CEO Keith Anderson is on £1.15m.
* E.On boss Michael Lewis is on £1m
* EDF's Simone Rossi is also on £1m
* And their top execs enjoyed a share of £4.65m
* Peter Simpson of Anglian Water earned a £1.3m pay package
* Welsh Water bosses awarded themselves bonuses of over £930,000
* Severn Trent bosses awarded themselves bonuses of £5.56m
* Thames Water's Sarah Bentley, received a £727,000 bonus on top of her £2m annual salary Meanwhile there are...
* People who haven't had breakfast and/or lunch TODAY, because they can't afford it.
* People using FoodBanks because food is becoming more of a luxury than a necessity.
* Children celebrating a birthday without presents.
* Parents worrying about new school uniforms - and some schools enforcing rules which are not cost-effective.
* People who can't get to work because they can't afford to put petrol in their cars/pay for public transport anymore.
*People who are working so much they're making themselves ill, and they STILL CAN'T AFFORD to pay their bills.
* People who have been given fines by these same energy/water companies because they couldn't afford to pay their bills in the first place - increasing their debt. * Customers being told to do STAR JUMPS TO KEEP WARM for crying out loud!
* Hose pipe bans when gallons of water leak away everyday.
* Elderly people NOT DRINKING because they're worried about running out of water!!! All this and energy prices are set to rise up to 75% in October... THIS IS MADNESS!.. I'm all for supporting profits ..I'm not for supporting greed at the cost of lives of others..
And on that note i will rest my case that its all about greed and not helping anyone except the fat cat bosses.

[theunknowntech]

Do you actually have any idea how miniscule the profit margins for an energy supplier are? It doesn't sound like you do, but I can tell you it's around 1% at the best of times because over 95% of the rest goes on expenses of all sort of types. Plus there's the thousands or even tens of thousands of employees at all those companies - many of whom don't get crazy high salaries. Those costs quickly add up.

And besides, none of that has anything to do with the issue at hand. The super high wholesale gas prices are the problem. Energy suppliers want to bring prices down, but they can't right now because it'd cripple them.

To me, I'm getting the impression you're on some personal vendetta more than anything else. I don't see that campaign getting to its goals and it will only make things worse either way. You may as well abandon it.

[theunknowntech]

* People who haven't had breakfast and/or lunch TODAY, because they can't afford it.
Please provide proof of that - I don't accept unfounded or unverifiable claims

* People using FoodBanks because food is becoming more of a luxury than a necessity.

I've not seen any reports of this

* Children celebrating a birthday without presents.

There are still ways to celebrate anyway. I always get terrible Christmas and Birthday presents these days anyway but I still try to enjoy the occasion

* Parents worrying about new school uniforms - and some schools enforcing rules which are not cost-effective.

Maybe... Try talking to the headteacher for help? Schools might be flexible in some cases

* People who can't get to work because they can't afford to put petrol in their cars/pay for public transport anymore.

Railcards, season tickets, bus passes, work from home, walking... Tons of options to avoid that problem

*People who are working so much they're making themselves ill, and they STILL CAN'T AFFORD to pay their bills.

UK Law bans forcing employees to overwork themselves to such an extent

* People who have been given fines by these same energy/water companies because they couldn't afford to pay their bills in the first place - increasing their debt.
There's tons of ways to resolve this. If you're struggling, don't suffer in silence. StepChange is a great resource, as is simply talking to your supplier. Doing that can easily avoid late fees, you just need to work with your supplier!

* Customers being told to do STAR JUMPS TO KEEP WARM for crying out loud!

So...? You're saying to just be lazy and sit on the sofa?

* Hose pipe bans when gallons of water leak away everyday.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to maintain such huge infrastructure? Maybe you should give it a try

* Elderly people NOT DRINKING because they're worried about running out of water!!! All this and energy prices are set to rise up to 75% in October... THIS IS MADNESS!.. I'm all for supporting profits ..I'm not for supporting greed at the cost of lives of others..

Again, this isn't valid. If you're struggling, talk to your supplier and they can help.