Fuel costs continued

Two blogs back I wrote about the fact that I had only just received my Winter Fuel Payment. Yesterday I received the following letter (click on it to obtain a larger image). It tells me that I will receive my payment between 15/09/08 to 21/09/08. In case you are thinking that maybe the letter got lost in the post, no! It is dated 7/01/09!




So they are telling me I WILL receive my payment 4 months ago.



Is there any hope for the world when a letters like this are sent out?

Fuel costs ...

My sister-in-law has been on at me because I hadn't received my winter fuel allowance from the government, which, due to my age, I'm now entitled to. I rang up the people and was told that as I am on jobseeker's allowance at the moment, it comes through them. Seems to me a fairly incomprehensible piece of logic, but there you are.

Now it takes a number of phone calls over a number of days to manage to get through to the jobseeker's allowance number, but I finally succeed. By the time the phone is answered, the music has all but driven me mad! But I'm still sane enough to explain the situation and I must compliment the man I spoke to because he rang me back later and then rang me again today to say that the allowance should now be in my bank account. And it is!

In the meantime I decided to work out to see whether my energy providers (Scottish Power) are overcharging me on the monthly direct debit, which we hear British Gas are doing. Calculating the gas payment is not easy! But I constructed a spreadsheet on the computer which worked out the monthly charge, based on today's prices, on a year's worth of meter readings. It came out at £106.80. What are they charging me? £106! I was gutted! I was all ready to write and complain!

Oh well, never mind. It's good that they are not overcharging. But I will keep watch when energy prices go down - as they say they must. Well, the government say they must, the energy companies don't seem so sure!