So we were originally with pure planet at £76 for gas and electric, when they went bust they swapped us to shell energy, the payments have been creeping up and they are estimating us to be £197 a month…
There is no way I’m changing my direct debit to this, we’re already in credit so rightly or wrongly we’re going to hang on and see what happens.
scary times ahead for everyone!!
We moved house last year and the previous owner was signed up to Pure Planet who had no phone number available to provide our initial meter reading to. Within a week they’d gone bust.
Dealing with Shell Energy has been hellish. Initially they denied being our supplier despite sending us two letters telling us they were - one to say they’d been assigned our new supplier and the other to say they’d be sending a bill soon. Then after 4 months we got sent a bill with an estimated electricity reading which we paid.
The estimated reading was for more electricity than we’d used but as rates were going up it made sense not to quibble. They then sent another bill a month after that requesting £100 despite the fact that I’d already set up a direct debit out that was scheduled for 15th of the month (letter was dated 4th).
Checked the meter and we were still below what we’d already paid for so went onto their chat function to get this recognised and the person on chat acknowledged the bill was too high but wanted to adjust it to £15 owing. She could not understand when I said that we had not yet used all the electricity we had paid for and therefore should be in credit. She kept saying the bill we paid was estimated - yes, estimated wrongly saying we’d used more than we had. Eventually she hung up the chat. I then had to phone, wait for 30 mins to speak to someone, who then put me through to the finance team who said this bill didn’t need to be paid but still could not confirm we were in credit.
I would love to change providers but it seems it’s really risky to do that at the moment unless anyone can advise otherwise.
As we live in the countryside we don’t have gas available and have to buy heating oil which has doubled in price since December and is even more expensive than gas. I’ve paid £1000 in less than 6m.
I just don’t know how all of this is sustainable?! Pay is not increasing at or above the rate of inflation. I also wonder what the point is of investments in green energy if they do not lower prices?
my boyfriend frustrates me, running hot water to rinse his hands for five seconds 
. I'm tempted to put some solar panels on my garage roof soon, I do need to look in to if it's worth doing because they've just cut the VAT on renewables!