JEN FERGUSON

Rising energy costs

reviewing energy tariffs. But let’s be honest: most of us undertook these actions months ago when the energy crisis first took hold. And as a retailer, there are things you just can’t switch off. Warm wine and beer from fridges on standby, anyone?

The government also recommends installing a smart meter. But what do you do when a smart meter doesn’t work? This is the situation we found ourselves in when we realised that the device installed in our basement had not been sending readings through to our supplier, Ecotricity.

To rectify this, we sent through a manual reading – and promptly received an enormous bill. As this was unexpected and unbudgeted, we asked the Ecotricity team if we could spread the load and split the bill across two months. They agreed to this, but only on the proviso that we agreed to also pay a new “estimated monthly usage” amount that was nearly four times higher than any bill we’ve ever received in eight years of trading.

Despite all evidence pointing to the contrary, the team refused to budge, so in the end we just paid the bill in order to draw a line under the sorry affair.

Other businesses may not be in a position to do this, however. Fellow