Episode 1 Rip Off Britain

We asked you to tell us who has left you feeling ripped off.

think this is very, very wrong for what they have done. The bank piles

charges upon charges. The legally it was right. Morally? That is

where the question and doubt comes in. And you contacted us in your

thousands, by post, email and even stopping us in the streets. The

message could not be clearer. don't always get a straight answer.

They try and fob you off. I am not happy with them. There is always

the small print with the clause that you did not realise. We are

being ripped off big time. If it is a deliberate rip-off, a mistake, a

capped in the small print, we will find out why you are out of pocket

and what you can do about it. Keep asking the questions. Go to the top

if you have to. We do get results, that is the interesting thing.

stories and your money. This is Rip Off Britain.

Hello and welcome to Rip Off Britain, the series that battles on

your behalf to sort out your complaint and try to make sure that

nobody is taking advantage of you and your money. Today we have the

big six very firmly in our sides. That is right. I am talking about

the main UK gas and electricity providers. If there is one cost on

all our minds this winter, it is the ever soaring energy bills.

Never have they been higher or more confusing. The energy companies are

saying that they had no choice but to put their prices up. Is that

true? Are they just ripping us off? With so many of you feeling at the

mercy of these companies, the programme today is getting answers

on a topic that affects everybody. We will make sure you don't become

a casualty of the energy price wall. Coming up, we will see if the

current Mastermind champion can make sense of an energy bill. And

we will ask the Government's Energy Minister if he can make them

simpler and cheaper. The woman whose house ended up like this. All

because she tried to make it energy efficient. It was supposed to make

my house warmer, healthier, more efficient and it has done exactly

the opposite. We have enlisted a team of experts to solve your

problems face to face. This is our one-stop, pop-up shop.

Over the last year, all the big six energy companies have announced

price rises of an average of 16% for electricity and 19% for gas.

Although the big six energy companies have now started to drop

prices, we are all still feeling a major squeeze on our wallets,

because they are not putting them down by as much as they went up.

Even now, you can still save money by switching supplier. In fact,

according to figures from the comparison site uSwitch, if all UK

households moved on to the best possible deal, the country could

collectively save a staggering 3.2 billion on its energy bills. Where

to start? With 300 different tariffs available, it is not easy

to work out how much you are playing. The higher cost of our

energy bills this winter is there something that -- is something that

affects all of us. We asked if you had an opinion and you did not hold

back. The recent rises are atrocious. They are ripping off

consumers all over Britain. The put it up in the summer because you do

not notice. In the winter you think twice before you leave it on all

day. One company increases the prices and then a couple of weeks

later the other one follows, regardless of whether they need to

one not. The energy companies say the price rises are unavoidable

because of rising costs and they insist our prices are the most

competitive in Europe. It is not just the cost of your bills that

you have been contacting us about. Patricia is one of many people to

tell us that bills can be hard to make sense of. I contacted Rip Off

Britain because I was contact bio cold called salesperson. The talk

that he gave me was in units and megahertz and things. I looked at

one of my bills and I thought that they did not understand what he had

been going on about. Patricia had no idea if she had been offered a

good deal. I would have changed tariffs if I had understood the

tables within my bills. He tried to say which was the cheapest but I

had no way of knowing. experience is typical of what both

consumers and the regulator Ofgem believe, that tariffs are simply

too complicated. Of course the energy companies do not agree.

Energy UK, who represents them, accepts that there is a lot of

information that they are required to include on bills. They insist

that the industry is working hard to make them play and that

customers get an annual statement with all of the key details. -- to

make them clear. They say there is choice and the energy market and

they listen hard to what consumers are saying. Let's see if they will

listen to Patricia and everyone else who has told us the same thing.

I believe that every energy company should make it simple for every

consumer to be able to read an electric or gas bill. Just how hard

is it to understand your energy bills? Stay tuned, because later in

the programme we will be putting it to the test with the current

Mastermind champion. One way many of you have been able

to lower your fuel bills is by having cavity wall insulation to

make it more energy efficient. It keeps the heat in, but it can save

�100 per year. Under the Warm Front scheme, almost 2 million people

have qualified for a Government grant to help them get better

efficiency. But before you go ahead, be sure that your house is suitable.

Not all of them are. One of our viewers was horrified to find that

out. For most homes, cavity wall

insulation is a great idea. It adds an extra insulating layer between

the bricks and it can really help cut heating bills and keep the

tills at bay. That is certainly why Jane had it done. -- keep the chill

as at bay. Why on earth is she opening her windows on this cold

day in Cramlington? I have to open as many doors and windows as

possible to get some air into the house. Jane has lived in her modern

home in the village since 1997. It was an absolute pride and joy and

told has happened. -- until this happened. This is actually mould

and mildew growing on the top of the cupboard. It is into the

skirting boards. The cupboards are ruined. These are my handbags. You

can see the mould all over the back of it. Warm Front approached me and

offered me a grant to get cavity wall insulation put in.

Unfortunately it was supposed to make my house warmer, healthier,

more efficient. It has done exactly the opposite. The walls were filled

back in 2006, after a surveyor, the Warm Front scheme inspected the

house. He said it was suitable for cavity wall insulation. The loft

was intimated in 2007, again through Warm Front. They appointed

installers to do the job. After the work was done, Jane started

noticing mould and mildew on her clothes. At that time I thought it

must be structural, that the mould had to be coming from damp.

Therefore I got the drains check, the guttering, the roof, in case

there was any water coming in through that. But it was none of

those things. We asked Steve Hodgson from a trade body which

represents specialists in insulation to take a look. Good

morning. He says the trouble has been caused by the fact that

without extra work, Jane's house was simply not right for this type

of insulation in the first place. When the initial survey was done,

it should have been picked up that the building's design meant that

problems could occur. The property has almost no natural ventilation.

There are no fans, no extractors. There is very little opportunity

for the moisture in the air to escape. What has happened, where

the insulation has got into the walls, it has warmed up the

external walls and it has made the uninsulatable walls much colder,

which has attracted the moisture and now you have got the mould and

mildew growing, which you can see affecting a number of rooms. Worry

only, Jane was told by an environmental health officer at

that the mould could be damaging the family's health. -- worry only.

He said basically my home had been bubble-wrapped and so it cannot

breed. There is nowhere for the heir to go and we are going to be

breeding in all of those mould spores. This bubble-wrapped house

is not a one-off. Steve Hodgson has seen other people that have gone

down the insulation group only to find it was not necessarily

suitable for their home. Unfortunately surveyors and

specifiers are coming out and grabbing, if you like, the easy

work, and not really thinking about the building as an individual unit,

not thinking about where they should apply the insulation other

than just the easy bits. Quick, simple, but not always right for a

house. As you can see, it is wet and soggy. In May, 2011, when she

finally made the connection between the mould and the insulation, Jane

complained to Warm Front. Eight months later she is still stuck.

Two inspectors have visited and concluded that issue to do with the

design of the building our material to the problems that she suffered,

they did not acknowledge that was something the original inspection

should have spotted. When we got in touch with Warm Front, they pointed

out that since 2000 they have helped to million households make

their homes warmer and more affordable to heat. They agree that

they should have helped Jane more quickly and they apologise for the

inconvenience caused. They say that rather than cause the problem, the

insulation highlighted a pre- existing condition of humidity.

They have identified what action needs to be taken to better

ventilate the house and they will arrange for the work to be

completed as quickly as possible. For Jane that cannot come soon

enough. I actually feel very angry that my things, that I have worked

really hard for, have been destroyed. You can't replace

everything. It is in pictures, in clothes, in handbags. It is even in

my bedding. All of these things I can't afford to replace. It seems

that Jane is still in limbo, which as you might imagine is extremely

frustrating, especially at this time of year. We hope she gets some

kind of answer very soon. If your house is suitable, cavity wall

insulation is one of the best way to make it more energy efficient.

You can find out more about how to go about it by contacting the

Energy Saving Trust. The details Last September, we went to the

Trafford Centre in Manchester. For one weekend only, we opened up a

pop-up shop, with the team of experts on hand to offer consumer

advice. We tried to solve your problems in person, right away.

Good morning, everybody. I am impressed that you turned up early

to be first in line. I hope somebody can help me and point me

in the right direction. We have a couple of people from Trading

Standards and some other people as well so hopefully we can find you

the solution today. Thank you for coming. Unsurprisingly concern over

energy prices was a recurring theme. Do you think you are being ripped

off? With energy bills. And energy bills, yes. They keep ongoing up.

What is bothering you? They talk about things going up and it is all

based on fuel. Phil came to see our energy expert just before his

tariff was going to and. I want to know if I should go on a capped

tariff, standard tariff, or any online tariff. You need to be aware

of what your current energy supplier will offer you. I think it

is the standard rate plus 5%. standard rate, that is the most

expensive product for an eight energy supply it so do not accept

that. We can get you on line and find the best product for you.

Shall we jump in? Yes, please. Straightaway we can see here that

the cheapest tariff for you on the market at the moment would save you

�271 per year. That is pretty good. Quite a healthy saving. Christopher

was among the people that told us that he has difficulty working out

the details of his energy tariff. Bills, you need a degree in maths

to understand it. For a start, the meter shows metric units, but they

do not charge metric units. They charge kilowatt hours. What can you

do? They take the metric units, multiply it by 39.2225. I don't

know where they get that figure from. That gives them the calorific

value. It is easy to hide being ripped off here because people do

not understand it and do not We'll be putting some of these

points to the Energy Secretary Chris Huhne later in the programme,

and asking him what he's going to do about it. But we've a lot more

of your energy horror stories to hear about first, and here's one

Rip-Off viewer furious about what happened to them. In 2006,

Scarborough musician Donald Grayson had a new electricity meter fitted

after joining E.ON's StayWarm tariff. He paid �70 a month, which

was open to review at the end of each year. As the end of his first

year approached, E.ON told Donald something he didn't like the sound

of. When my contract was up for renewal, they sent me a letter,

which said, "You've been identified as a very heavy user of

electricity." Well, that's bunkum, because everything was the same, I

hadn't changed anything - not even a new kettle in that time - so

there was no way I could possibly be using any more electricity. He

managed to negotiate a more reasonable price rise than the one

they had suggested, but a year later, E.ON once again told him he

was using very high levels of energy. They refused to renew his

current deal, and he was taken off the StayWarm fixed tariff. But as

soon as he got the first bills on the new tariff, Donald knew

something wasn't right. The first bills were all big bills from

December �400, �300 January. 360 odd the next month, something like

that, and I'm thinking, "These are all big bills," and I'm ringing

them up and saying, "These are big bills," sort of thing, and then

they've come up with an excuse saying, "Your meters have not been

read, we're just estimating them." Well, that's bunkum because I've

got bills which say on them, actually, "Read by us". The others

that weren't "read by us" were read by me. Hendon ald kept getting

bills he was sure were too high. E.ON insisted they were right, but

by the summer of 2010, enough was enough. June was 700 and something,

which was diabolical, but it wasn't as bad as July, and I finished up

with �1,300 for a month's electricity. Are they pulling my

wire? Donald suggested there could be a problem with the meter, but

E.ON wouldn't accept it, so he decided to change energy companies.

And when his new supplier npower checked the meter, they found it

was running almost 70% faster than it should have been. E.ON had been

massively overcharging Donald for months, so he went back to them to

point that out. They've made an offer, but from my calculations and

my working out of the arithmetic, they obviously went to a different

school - it doesn't add up. It just does not add up. Donald's

disappointed with what the company has done to put things right, and

doesn't think it fully covers what he was over-billed. E.ON disagree.

They told Rip-Off Britain that as well as reimbursing what he was

overpaid, they've also added a... ..and point out that the Energy

Ombudsman has ruled that to be fair. Donald is frustrated at how long

this took to put right, but he's now got a new meter, and is much

happier with his current bills. My electricity bill now is, just with

npower, �137. So, why couldn't E.ON do it? Why? They just fobbed me off

all the time. And if they fob me off, there's a lot of old people

getting fobbed off. Big companies don't always make things easy to

understand. And it can be confusing trying to work out just why you

haven't ended up with what you expected. So, if you feel bogged

down, we've put together a booklet of tips and advice. You can find a

link to the free guide on our website. Or, to receive a copy in

the post, send an A5 self-addressed envelope to the address we'll give

you at the end of the programme. Earlier on in the programme we

heard how confusing many of you find your energy bills, working out

what you're paying per unit or indeed what tariff you're on, I'm

afraid, is still a mystery for a lot of people. So, if you've ever

wondered if you need the brain of Britain to understand what you're

paying, we thought we'd put that to the test by asking someone who was

once the brain of Britain to take a look. Dr Ian Bayley has another

impressive title, he's the current Mastermind champion so all round a

very clever chap. The question is, is he clever enough to get to the

bottom of our baffling bills? That's the challenge we've set to

the 2011 Mastermind champion, Ian Bayley. He's got a PhD in computer

science and a very astute eye for detail. But will he be able to

answer questions about an energy bill, even with the paperwork in

front of him? Ian Bayley, university senior lecturer, energy

bills. Can you identify what type of tariff is on that bill? I can't

see advanced tariff here. I can't see beginner's tariff. There is a

tariff for the first seven kilowatts, except, later on it

seems to be for the first 749 kilowatts. Is there a standing

charge? Right, well I'd expect to see it in the summary. For the gas,

it seems to be a certain number of kilowatt hours times a certain

amount. If I had to guess, yes, I do have to guess, don't I? If I had

to guess, I'd say no. How much energy has been used in this

billing period? Trn I've got one plus 11 plus 142, so that's about

155, 160. There's this formula, metric units used, calorific value,

volume correction to convert to kilowatt hours and divide by 3.6.

No, I don't know. BUZZER Can you find any information on whether

that bill is estimated or not? can see some information about

whether it is actual or estimated. You see, there are three periods

here. I'm thinking that, if it was actual for the start of this block

of three periods, and actual for the end of this block of three

periods, then it has not been estimated. BEEP. That's correct.

There you have it. That's three wrong and just one right answer, so

with the tough questions over, it's clear that Ian is as confused as

the rest of us. Even looking at those bills, he can't figure them

out. What's particularly confusing, is there are always two tariffs.

One when you have used a certain number of units and before you have

used that certain number of units. The changeover point is bound to be

different for each of these utility companies. So you can't possibly do

any sort of like-for-like comparison. He thinks there should

be a set pricing structure, which all the energy companies should

stick to. I think all of the energy companies should just simplify

their pricing structure. I am the current champion and former brain

of Britain and I have a PHD in computer science. If I can't work

out an energy bill, then what hope does anyone else have? Well, it's

clear that the huge hike in energy prices is providing the biggest

financial headache for most consumers this year. Do you think

enough is being done to bring down the cost of gas and electricity?

Well let's go and ask the Energy Minister, Chris Huhne. Minister,

I'm not going to beat about the bush. There is a big sign to the

entrance here which says, "Check, switch insulate." That is a bit of

a joke in view of some of the things that people have been

writing to us about. First, check. When did you last check your bills?

When you did - About a month ago. Did you understand it? I did, but I

have to say it's not easy to understand and that's why one of

the things we are doing is to try to simplify tariffs with Ofgem and

make sure there are far fewer. going to stop you there, because

I've seen information which says that between the six, there are

three -- there are 300 separate tariffs. When you are checking, if

you want to see whether or not you can have a better price with

another company, it's impossible to check like with like? How will you

get them down? We have to simplify and Ofgem have that under way.

We'll insist that they have far fewer tariffs, so it's much simpler

for the consumer to understand what is going on to see which is the

better deal and to switch. You are absolutely right. We have to make

it much simpler. At the Liberal Democrats party conference, you

said you will get tough with the big six and you referred to

predatory pricing. That is the kind of thing that got you lots of

applause. What the public want to know is when will we see the

results or will it remain political rhetoric? We are doing that now.

I've been in conversation then and a long time before in order to make

sure we are dealing with any abuses in the sector. Clamping down on

mis-selling and introducing new powers to allow redress to consumer,

which we will legislate for in the Energy Bill and making sure that

it's easier for consumers to compare prices, by shrinking the

number of tariffs and making sure through the market reform we get

more people into the markets, so it's going to be more competitive.

Good news for consumers. All of those things don't happen overnight,

but all of those things are things we are working on with as much

urgency that we can muster and I know Ofgem are doing that now.

Finally, put yourself in the place of a pensioner, of a single mother,

a family on a fixed income, facing this cold winter. A huge bill for

electricity and gas. They know they can't meet, because although the

prices have gone up, their incomes have either stayed level or dropped

completely. My reaction would be horror. There is no doubt about it,

if you are in a situation where suddenly you get a large bill which

is outside what you can afford, it's extremely distressing and

obviously like many MPs, I have people who come to me in my surgery

every week, in my constituency, and I see them and they are often in

that sort of position, not just with energy bills, but with other

things as well. It is extremely difficult and that's one of the

reasons why, as a Government, we have increased by two thirds the

amount of discount which is going to be available, particularly to

elderly pensioners, in this sort of situation. We are helping to tackle

poverty, but I don't want in anyway to underestimate the gravity of the

problem that we have, as a country, still compared with other European

countries. There are a number of people who are in real danger for

their health as a result of this sort of situation. We must tackle

that. It's an urgent national priority. Thank you. All the energy

companies have said they are committed to simplifying bills.

British Gas was the first. Since last November they now have just

two tariffs and bills have a full breakdown of costs, including

profits. A number of other providers have since announced

changes to theirs, which it is hoped will make reading your bill

much more straightforward. Are you baffled by your bills? I think this

cannot be true. It's totally unacceptable. I was so angry.

Trying to go through never-ending small print that leaves you totally

confused. I might have been stupid for not reading it, or read it and

not took it in. I could kick myself. You can always write to us. The

Rip-Off team is always looking for the stories that matter to you.

Well, even though our gas and electricity bills are so much

higher this winter than last, do remember, there really is still

money to be saved by switching. Staying loyal to your energy

supplier could mean you're paying well over the odds by hundreds of

pounds in some cases. If you feel like you've had poor customer

service from any company you do business with, not just the energy

ones, then make sure you complain. I always say, go right to the top

if you have to, until you get some decent answers. Sometimes that's

the only way. In the meantime, do keep your letters and e-mails

coming in to us because we're always delighted to hear from you,