i was just accosted by a door-to-door electricity salesman

Sounds like what the long-distance people used to do to get you. What was it called, slamming or something?

http://www.phoronix.net/image.php?id=509&image=enermax_marathon_doc

i just can't believe the nerve it must take to go around to people's houses with a clipboard and ID card and just lie right in their faces!

do you have any valuables that can be easily viewed through the front door?

Besides yr harbl?

my hallway has about three right angles in it before you even get to a room so the only thing he saw was coats and shoes. i was thinking about where in the house my baseball bat was, though.

Do you never get door-to-door guys at all? He could have been contracted by the power company to get customers. If he's making $$ per sign up that could encourage him to be dishonest. Call/write the company and complain.

Tracer, I'd be happy to YSI you some electricity if you're looking for some. A small donation to my Paypal would be all I'd ask in return.

go look at consumerist. they've been doing a series on these companies.

I had a couple of these a while back. They were two extremely large guys. One of them stood on the pavement rather than coming up to the front door. The guy to whom I answered the door had official-looking npower ID, and asked to see my electricity bill so he could see if he could save me money. Needless to say, I told them to leave and called Thames Valley Police. Good times.

I didn't sign anything but I did tell him my name and now I'm kind of freaking out that he's switched me anyway.

I had these cunts come round and try this on me a few years back. Same thing - just sign here to express your interest and we'll send you an information pack. Yeah right.

I know we had to get rid of a lot of sales agencies recently that were pulling the same stunts, pretending to get your permission to investigate why you pay so much for electricity and then sign you up. It causes problems for the supplier too cos when an account moves from one supplier to another and then back again because they shouldn't have been transferred in the first place (an erroneous transfer, it's called) it causes an awful lot of problems and headaches for everyone concerned. NP0w3r are known as being pretty bad at not filtering out agents that do this, so yeh, complain.

WHy not just use solar power?

lads what are we paying for electricity these days and how much are we using

ive switched tariffs, am sending back to the grid and am getting v nerdy about charts graphs and trends who's with me

I literally have no idea I get these bills and I'm like are you sure

same, i haven't a clue. recently my provider said 'we'd like to raise your direct debit by x amount' and i mailed back and said 'why' and they said 'it's cool, we don't have to raise it if you don't want to' without any answer to my question.

in 2022 my monthly BG gas/electric dd more than doubled to roughly £250+, then in late '23 they said oopsy, we are taking a bit too much here and lowered it to £192. And then last month they lowered it to £103, and despite their estimate being slightly lower than the true meter readings, my account is somehow £800 in credit. I'm never getting a smart meter, because they enable your supplier to switch you onto the notoriously ripoff pay as you go system remotely, if you ever miss a payment. I prefer it in when the fuckers need to kick my door in to impose pay as you go.

same, i haven't a clue. recently my provider said 'we'd like to raise your direct debit by x amount' and i mailed back and said 'why' and they said 'it's cool, we don't have to raise it if you don't want to' without any answer to my question.

― LocalGarda, Sunday, 29 December 2024 09:21 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yep had this conversation with them last year alright.

when i left my last flat there was some huge amount in the account, i hadn't been paying attention. when i said i'll have that back thanks, the lengths they went to try to pretend it was vital to keep it there was genuinely like that bit in glengarry glenross when the jonathan pryce character realises al pacino's salesman is just bluntly lying to him.

like any effort to say 'well how much should i leave in or why' was just met with 'all of it' in sales speak.

like calz i tend to assume a smart meter is just another way of them lying, ripping me off, or controlling things. i am fairly tinfoil hat about it in that if they want me to have one i assume it's bad for me.

prob about 30-40% of household bills are spent with bodies that are completely unaccountable, with no clarity about what you're paying for. council tax and leasehold even worse. just handing over money and any attempt to find out what it was spent on is met with total resistance, surprise and shambolic record keeping. i waged a one-man campaign to find out what a £400 quid leasehold increase was spent on, with my council, and the most itemisation they could offer was 'maintenance and repairs'. like getting your bill in a restaurant and it saying 'food and drinks'.

and sorry, that itemisation was after about two months of me hassling them and threatening them. that was the end result.

i have a smart meter but i live in the eu it seems to be used as youd expect

as you'd expect?

as eu'd expect

That wasn't a clarification

lads what are we paying for electricity these days and how much are we using

In November we used 1773 kWh which cost us $207.97. This was 59 kWh per day, significantly less than last year's 70 kWh/day, this is because my nephew is no longer staying in the converted garage,

we are paying just over $0.10 USD per kWh currently

Dmac do u have solar sending back to the grid?

That's about a quarter of the price of energy in Ireland and significantly higher than the average usage

According to this anyway but don't know how accurate it is https://switcher.ie/gas-electricity/guides/energy-bills/what-is-the-average-gas-and-electricity-bill-in-ireland/

prob 400 kWh of that is the hot tub

perhaps that's why some US hot tub models also have a time machine feature

if only! we also have a tenant upstairs whose only heat/AC is electric, that's probably where another fair chunk of that usage comes from. Main house has gas heat.

i am sending back to the grid in the past two months sleeve, its a small array and obv not the greatest two months in which to do so

i think our usage (less what we produce) will be about 4800kwh a year, half of that is charging car tho

have been able to work out some figures recently although a full year will be needed to average out, but to sleeve's figures upthread:

paying about 11c per kwh, on track for 4800 kwh for the year, half of that still car which represents significant value vs fuel cost for the same mileage.

at present 2/3 of our energy usage is between 2-5am which is a very low price on our tariff, and taking into account usage between 11pm-8am (second lowest tariff aside from that window) that rises to a combined 80% or so.

panels take the sting out of the higher charge per kwh during the day and peak times from march-oct and theres a hit from there but overall it works well.

the option of a battery to charge at night and use during the day would prob not pay off given our usage afaict

yes im on holiday this is what im doing

Yes, it’s very hard to make a home battery work if you want it to save more than it costs you