Dear LPG, 

By the time you are reading this message, if LPG have posted it when I have asked them to, we should be nearing the end of October and by now, every household in the UK should have received the first instalment of the £400 that the government has promised that they will give us to help with utility bills and I suggest that everyone should be checking that they have received it.

I bet that the whole question of how much the bills have gone up has started popping up in conversations all over the country.  We all knew the prices would rise but I have to admit to being shocked when I saw the difference between what I paid in September as opposed to October in spite of the fact that it is getting colder.

I know that if you pay by direct debit you are just supposed to let the companies take the amounts of money needed out of your bank account, but it is worth checking how much it has gone up and if you have received the governments financial help.

They are leaving getting the payments to us to the energy companies that supply our energy and, if you pay your gas and electricity bills to different companies, it is the electricity bill supplier that is responsible for getting your grant to you.

I have also read that there are a lot of scammers out there who are taking advantage of the fact that this is all so difficult to really understand and would like to remind readers that if you get a phone call or are approached about getting a better deal, the best thing to do is telephone the number which appears on your electricity bill and ask what is going on there, or failing that, get a friend or family member to check for you.   

I really don’t understand much about the price cap that has been talked about but how you get your grant depends on how you pay your bill.  I have found some information which might throw a little clarity on the whole situation but the one thing that won’t help is not keeping up to date with how this will affect each of us.  

I suggest that no matter how depressing the result, we should all be making contact with our suppliers to work out just where we are up to.

RW, Dulwich

RW passes on a little bit of what she had learned about this really confusing subject…

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