Thread: Help help help please!

Does anyone know the rates for Scottish power Business Economy 7 and the charges and the VAT? I have a really complicated story re: my electricity supply.I rent a 2 roomed holiday property and part of a nursery.The owner of the property put in a card meter when we moved in and we have been buying £10 cards from him since 1st November 2008.We thought we were using too much electricity during the winter months and had to turn off the storage heaters in an effort to save money.Our total kwhs from 1/11/2008-11/03/2010 is 21263.The meter is set at a flat rate of 11p per unit and there are 3-4 other meters at other properties all coming from the same supply and all set at 11p per unit.When I asked him about this flat rate he said that it was to help recover some of the charges and vat.He is by far the biggest user and insists hes not making money from anybody but our total card input @ £10 each is £1272. That seems extortionate to me-I could be wrong.ARE WE ALL PAYING HIS BILL TOO?

Info I should have added to my last post-although the owner told us everyone was on the flat rate of 11pper unit we found out how to check the display window and found that on the 28th Feb 2010 our rate had been set at 13pper unit. My husband had already approached the owner about our high payments and we decided to let him know that we had clocked the 13p rate. We checked again just before going to him armed with the info and lo and behold the rate had miraculously changed to 11p. One of the other people who is on one of these money making machines told us that while we were out he had paid a friendly landlord visit to her and casually asked her if she thought her electricity was ok. She thought it was possibly alright as she has a catering unit and spends many hours in there day and night with lots of fridges,freezers and various leccy equipment. I told him about the change in the rate and his response was that he "didn't know what was going on there then". THESE METERS CAN ONLY BE SET OR CHANGED BY THE OWNER WITH A SPECIAL CARD.I am losing sleep over this and the landlord has become quite distinctly shirty.

needs merging with http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk...lp-please.html

Two threads merged, Grannyann, please continue to post on this thread.

Thanks.

Scott.

Thanks Scott, sorry but very new to this and taking small stumbling steps to get the hang of it.

business rates are normally negotiated on a contract by contract basis, which would mean it's very difficult to give a ball park figure as they vary so much.

It's pretty clear though your landlord is ripping you off, these cash collection devices (the token meter you have is basically a newer version of a coin meter) are awful, your landlord as you say can control anything and charge you as much as he likes.... just bear in mind though it is illegal for him to profit from the sale of electricity to yourself

Thanks for your input-I did think that it was illegal. I don't know who to contact about this-Scottish Power wouldn't give me the time of day if I rang them as I'm not the customer.

I managed to worm out of him this much, that the day rate is in the region of 8.9ppu and the night rate(7hours of god knows when) is in the region of 5ppu, not one of us who is on a meter is benefitting from the cheaper rate!

I think the difficulty is that these meters can only be set with one rate, they're not a 2 rate meter.

Some other facts to consider is that VAT is charged at 17.5% on business accounts and there is a climate change levy on business accounts also, but I'm not sure of how this is worked out.

Perhaps trading standards would be the next step in the right direction re him overcharging you... Just bear in mind that if you take action against your landlord his shirty behavious is only going to get worse!

You could look at having your own supply installed, but this is likely to cost in the thousands

Thanks for replying. I am aware that there are different levies applied to Businesses, but based on the fact that he is charging 11ppu on a flat rate and that the day rate is under 9ppu and the night rate is under 5ppu he is already over charging 2ppu daytime and a whopping 6ppu for the seven night hours.Surely that MORE than pays our contribution towards the charges and VAT. We are not the only ones he has on a meter-there are at least 4 meters all paying this same 11ppu, so if you multiply what our over charge is x4 and also bear in mind that they are all heavier users, we must be subsidising him. Nearly every site I've looked at gives an average of our size property and usage as roughly £450 per annum.So far we have paid over 16and a half months £1272 and rising daily.