Otto Says - Fashion, Not so easy this far from the catwalk.

Standing charges - the big energy rip off

Energy bills here in the UK are formed of two parts, the standing charge and the usage related charges. These charges are billed to customer in a couple of ways. Either the standard charges are separately listed on the bill or the first units used are charged at a higher rate compared to the later units. With the later method, once the standing charges are amortised into the higher price early units, the per unit charge decreases. Recently many utilities companies have moved from the higher price early units charging methods to the listed standing charges method.

We have been looking after an unoccupied house recently, and received a combined gas and electic bill that comprised of £19 gas and £1 electric usage charges and £80 of combined standing charges. The standing charges were £16 for the electric £40 for the Gas, £10 as a Non-Energy charge and £20 gas transportation charge. We had the central heating on low and used the lights occasionally so the units are reasonable. The standing charges are an outrageous rip off for lower usage consumers.

We were also upset by the change of fundamental contract, without agreement. When we took over the property it was on a split price units tariff but EDF changed the electric contract to one with standing charges without content and refused to continue the supply on the previous agreed basis.

When EDF was asked to explain the bill or at least provide some justification the following lies were included in the explanation :

1. It works out cheeper for the users of more units.
2. EDF was compelled by the regulator to change the tariffs to separately listed standing charges.
3. It's easier to understand the bills.

Those points are bogus because :

1. The standing charges are fully included in the cost of the higher price first units. Once the threshold to the lower cost units is crossed there is no difference between a bill that has separately listed standing charges and one that have higher and lower unit charges.
2. Consumer Direct, the government consumer advice service, said that tariff structures are within the energy companies remit to decide.
3. Bills that are bigger the more energy used are less confusing than paying large standing charges for almost no energy usage.

Minimum billing amounts only benefit the utility companies and penalise low energy users. Fixed standing charges give no possibility of an energy charging holiday, every bill will be at least the minimum standing charges amount.

Small quantity users are paying a disproportionate infrastructure subsidies for the larger users. Consider the user that has a small flat and goes on holiday a lot. The standing charges are the same every quarter regardless of the low usage holiday periods. In most retail business the infrastructure costs are folded into the prices. Would you go to a petrol station that charge £5 every time you drove onto the forecourt even when you only bought a small top up of petrol ?

How it should work, is the exact reverse of the previous high cost for the first units arrangement.

If standing charges are to be used then the first units should be set at lower cost, until a cross over point of average usage then uplift the fixed price units. After the unit price threshold is crossed the units are charged at a higher level to discourage profligate use.

Gannett

Innovative solutions for an awkward customer.

I had a customer recently that needed an intervention, a few patches to be applied and a bit of cluster reconfiguration work. Problem was that customer was being a bit awkward insisting that who ever did the intervention stay on site of for the following 7 days to ensure that there were no bad side effects. I was not alone in the situation as vendor problem manager I had a company technical resource, a service partner company, regional technical consultants on hand to assist.

The deal was that who ever did the intervention had to stay for the monitoring and the customer preferred a vendor resource to perform the install. We all sat down to consider our response to the customer demands and came up with the following escape tactics...

• The team takes ownership of the whole operation, sliding different folk on to the critical terminal for each stage.
• Install the patch and at the next customer meeting have a few rounds of "He installed the patch." .. "No I didn't he installed the patch" Rinse and repeat.
• "Sorry I sipped on a banana skin, hit the return key and installed the patch by mistake."
• Explain that Auto update popped up dialog box, and no one was available to click "Install later".
• Have a person in a Santa Claus suit install the patch telling the customer that he is free until christmas for what ever you want to pay him to do.
• Try the Spartacus defence, All stand up and say "I installed the patch.","No I installed the patch."

Turns out that the customer deferred the whole install leaving them vulnerable to various crashes and hangs etc. I suspect that by the time the customer does get round to have the patch installed it will have been superseded by a later version.

Cheers

Gannett

The old cons are the best even in cyberspace

Some say that the old jokes are the best that fits nicely with the old con tricks being the best.

Here we are in 2011 some 20+ years after the first advice in 1987 that email attachments are dangerous seeing a huge rise in the volume of dangerous email attachments.

Come on people get your Norton installed, raise the trust barrier and kick this shit to the kerb. Just how dumb is anyone to fall for this one .... ?

Cheers

Gannett

PC world - Just don't

I broke one of my technology rules over the weekend and as usual regretted it almost immediately. That rule being "Don't buy anything at PC World". The store is no more a specialist store than Dixons and Curries. All those store are just "Pile it hight and sell it cheap." box shifting business models. That model can be ok if you see exactly what your after and know what you want to pay. For anything else there are better choices and better quality products at specialist stores.

These big box shifters buy in bulk with tight profit margins and rely on a huge choice to befuddle most consumers into buying something. Quality is a statistical exercise and service just a revenue opportunity.

This time I was browsing and liked the look of a Microsoft ARC slim small keyboard At 1p under £50 it did seem a bit spendy. I got the last one and off I went. Doh ! when home I realized I had fallen for the old the last box is empty because that's the box for the demo item trick.

Worked out ok in the end as with the prospect of having to go back to the store anyway, I checked on Amazon and found same item in the marketplace. Available from stock and only £30. Back to the store for a refund.

So don't buy at PC World because

1) You won't really get what you want,

2) It will cost more than is available elsewhere.

An alternative and good computer tech store is Novatech. Helpful assistants and a good spread of economical to top end computer kit.

Sailing to Byzantium, Robert Silverberg

Sailing to Byzantium by Robert Silverberg

Wow - a great read. Medium length stories that demo Mr. Silverberg awesome talent.

View all my reviews

BA lost bag phone madness

Here is a bit of a communication failure that really just fits the process. I flew back from Ankara via Dusseldorf yesterday and arrived safely. My single checked bag however has yet to arrive.

Waiting by the carousel as all the other bags squeaked round is a rather lonely experience but near to hand was the "Arrivals service team". I had the sticky baggage tag issued in Ankara that has the original and connecting flight details listed. The clerk cheerfully took down a few details and issued a lost bag receipt and uploaded a few details to the World tracer lost baggage tracking service.

The receipt had a URL for an online tracking web page for the baggage search process that showed the details I had submitted. Unfortunately the on-line version showed an incorrect baggage tag number, the last digit being one out. Such a flaw in the data was bound to fail the whole tracking service so I decided to call and correct the number.

Calling the Local Baggage Tracing office on the number listed on the receipt started a merry phone trail.

Calling 0800 408 1100 - gave the message "This number is no longer in service please redial another number."

Calling that number 0800 727800 - gave the message "This number is no longer in service please redial another number."

Calling that number 0844 493 0787 - gave a two level phone tree resulting in the message "Please call 0844 493 0785."

Calling that number eventually gave a vaguely helpful baggage tracing person. After updating the Baggage tag number to the correct value a search revealed that bag was likely to be still in Ankara. "A message will be sent and the bag hopefully delivered back to you." was the update. We will see how that turns out. Such a phone bounce around makes me think of an organisation held together with sticky tape and string. I hope that the planes are better maintained than this business processes.

The IATA travellers faq as some useful information on lost baggage and its retrieval. Including the faq that "globally 98.2% of all baggage travels with the passenger as planned" That works out at about 5 bags a plane going missing.

One item in the bag that I will be sad to loose was my trip reading Time Restored - The Harrison timekeepers and R.T. Gould, the man who knew (almost) everything" by Jonathan Betts. This excellent biography of the restorer of the first experimental Marine chronometers follows it's subject through the interesting parts of his life. Staring with a brief naval career, an ugly divorce, through the intense restoration work and on to radio celebrity status. An intriguing life from the last century of a fragile genius who first restored the important Harrison "longitude" clocks.

As for that festering bag of washing with the book - if they don't get that bag back to me soon I am sure it will be declared a Bio-hazard and humanly destroyed.

Cheers

Gannett

Bogus technical support, 2011

Do not accept technical support phone calls from people you don't know.

There is a big scam about that involves people being called by fake technical support people. Accepting their advice may result in lost money and lost security of your PC.

The crooks cold-call people at home and claim to be calling from Microsoft or a well-known security firm and offering "free security checks".

See this link for more details of the scam.

Some websites have been behaving in the same way tricking folks into downloading expensive and bogus "Security programs" see for more details see this link.

For good advice on home internet security see books such as this.

Lets be safe out there.

Gannett