Do the rising energy costs worry you? There IS something you can do to help yourself!
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. I have drafted a complaint letter which you can amend yourself
The energy company might offer you a small reduction – DON’T accept it. Keep the complaint open & hold strong. If they give you a generic reply to your complaint, reply back stating that you don’t accept their response and want to escalate it.
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 have 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. Imagine if millions of people did that!
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 and escalate them if necessary
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.
If you aren’t sure what to write, I have written a pre-canned letter that you can send directly to your supplier:
Official Complaint
I am writing to raise an official complaint about the exorbitant energy price changes which are being imposed on me and which do not justify reality. The companies that provide the power such as yourself are making eye watering profits:
- BP revealed second quarter profits that more than trebled to £6.9bn, up from £2.3bn last year
- Centrica half year profits increased to £1.3bn, a fivefold increase
- Shell achieved record second quarter results hitting £9.5bn
- EON made adjusted earnings of £245m, up 77% from the previous year
- EDF made half year earnings of £728m in the UK (a rise of 200% compared to last year)
Furthermore, standing cost electricity charges have doubled, however these charges have nothing to do with the underlying cost of energy. I do not consent to this.
Why are my energy costs going through the roof just so that it can continue to support your profits?