Consumer news and scams

[DaveR]

What's the actual difference in Kwh or Units for this year as opposed to last year?

[Yorkie]

What's the actual difference in Kwh or Units for this year as opposed to last year?

Haven't a clue as I know our consumption is very regular.  It is the huge price difference that is concerning me.  However, if the meters, or one of them, are inaccurate the charges will be based on the units and readings relayed to the readings control centre.   We have a small unit from which we can watch our own usage on a daily, weekly or monthly basis and can see where and what is using the power over each day.  I was concerned about some of the initial information it supplied but did not worry too much about it at the time.

It may well be that we have actually used what BG say but if so I don't know how!   I'll just leave it to them now and maybe fire up my emergency generator.   ZXZ

[DaveR]

Consumption figures, whether in Kwh or Units, are all on your Bills - it's an easy way to tell whether the increase is due to extra usage or an increase in the price per unit.

[Yorkie]

Consumption figures, whether in Kwh or Units, are all on your Bills - it's an easy way to tell whether the increase is due to extra usage or an increase in the price per unit.

I know what you mean 'cos I learnt about it when I did my Engineering studies.  The increase in the bills could be due to a number of reasons, even miscalculation, so I will let BG do the investigations and then challenge if I don't agree with them. I thank everyone for their comments and will let you know the outcome eventually.
 

[Yorkie]

Pleased to announce that my complaint received sympathetic hearing and after a couple of e-mails and one telephone conversation, I am receiving the equivalent of approx 10% off the bill in question. 
Mission accomplished!
 

[martin]

In early November last, I had new Gas and Electricity meters fitted at the instigation of British Gas.  They are the new, so called, Smart Meters, and smart they certainly are!   My first bill has increased by 70% over the same period last year, so that's SMART - especially for British Gas!  Needless to say Yorkie is a bit miffed, and apart from filing a complaint, has stopped the DD until the amount can be justified.

Anyone else had any experiences with BG?
 :rage:

This is an interesting thread as our gas bill has also increased for the last quarter when compared to the same period last year, in fact it has almost doubled.  Being a retired person with time on my hands I always keep a close eye on all of our expenditure, in the case of gas and electric usage, I do my own readings and calculations.  I always break down the consumption figures to show the cost per day for the gas and electric.  For the last quarter the electric usage per day was £1.37 which compares favourably with the corresponding figure last year of £1.32.  At this point I will say that as we are on a fixed term deal, there has been no change to the unit price, etc, over the periods I am comparing, so the electric comparison is as I would expect, almost identical for the two periods, however the gas comparison shows a massive cost increase.  For the period ending in February 2012 the daily cost was £2.12, the same period this year it is £4.10 per day.  Because of this I have just had our boiler checked/serviced, and no problems were found, the engineer also checked for leaks, but again all was in order, so I have no idea why there has been such an increase.  Perhaps the meter has developed a fault, but after reading about Yorkie’s experience of a new meter, I am rather reluctant to go down that road, the only thing I can think is perhaps the weather this year for the quarter ending 8th February was significantly colder than the correspond period last year, does anyone have any thoughts on that please?  (we are on a dual fuel deal with E-On).

[rhos.rover]

I thought I would warn any Yahoo mail users of a very nasty virus that is sweeping its system. I’m not sure this has been covered in other posts, but I will post it anyway in the hope it helps someone here.

Yesterday I got a phone text message from a friend who said the mail I sent him had an attachment he could not open. I was surprised as I had not written to him for weeks, and I have never sent him an attachment.

I checked my mail box and sent items when I got home and found that although my sent box showed nothing sent, I had sent mails to almost everyone in the address book…

I have more that one Yahoo account, for different car groups and so on, and checked these. Yep, some of these had done the same.

I asked my girl friend to check her Yahoo accounts, and two of hers were hacked and have done the same thing sending out mails.

None of my or her mail accounts were connected by contact lists, or even between our own accounts.

I checked on line and found that Yahoo mail has a serious problem.

Your mail box is hacked, and your contact or address list is plundered. The virus then mails everyone it can (including your account it cane from!) with a blank letter and an attachment.

This mail you receive could be in your name or one of your contacts. It can even be from someone you have once sent or received a mail from, and does not necessarily have to be from someone in your contact/address book.

Once you open the attachment it can releases a virus that can cause your mail box or computer to become infected.

One clue is that you may receive a (up till now) blank mail from a lot of contacts together, in a form of group email. This will be the same as the mail 'you sent out' without knowing it. It will have an attachment with it.

It started in America in late January and is now spreading to Britain. It appears to originate in India (where Yahoo farms out for cheap labour, ironic isn’t it as this could cost Yahoo dear...), and frozen mail box users in the US (who opened the attachment) received a mail containing notification that they are hacked, and also a telephone number to call to fix it. Once called, people with ‘poor spoken English’ offered an option to have the accounts restored for $100. No doubt you needed to pass over your bank details for this, and end up having your whole bank account emptied.

A video was posted on Youtube by an Indian IT worker, three weeks before this, and showed how easy it was to hack into Yahoo mail accounts, and hundreds of thousands of scammers had seen the video before it was removed.

It has now progressed into pointless hacking for fun, as well as for fraud. Sometimes its advertising, sometimes it is abusive, sometimes it’s a virus that destroys your mail account and there are even reports of damaging your PC. 

I warn anyone who has received a blank letter with an attachment appearing in their inbox to delete it ASAP, EVEN IF IT IS FROM SOMEONE YOU KNOW, as that is the whole point of plundering and using your contacts or names of people you trust.

This virus will spread to other mail addresses, such as Google, and as one computer is much the same as another, a virus opened via the attachment could take over your mail box or damage your PC.

I hope this makes sense. Please reply if you don’t understand and I will go over it again.

Simply, never, never open attachments that you are not expecting in your mail. If it is not accompanied with a letter that you KNOW is from someone you trust, DELETE IT.

[Ian]

"Users of Yahoo Mail are suffering from persistent hacking attempts, says The Next Web. The Internet firm, the third largest provider of email, behind Microsoft and Google, has plugged two security holes already, but has not managed to fix the problem.

While some holders of compromised accounts say that they clicked on an infected link--a fake MSNBC page, apparently--many claim that the first they knew of being hacked was when people in their contacts lists said they had received dodgy emails from them. One user, whose organization appears to have used Yahoo Mail, said that the hack--so evidently a scam--left the account in question unable to send emails or even change the password. For $100, they later discovered, the scammers would return their account to normal."

[born2run]

on my windows account I've recently had a lot of e mails from my ex girlfriend - saying stuff like "Hey you gotta see this etc" luckily I haven't opened any of the attachments - I assume it's the same thing, and getting a virus from an ex girlfriend  haha not that uncommon 

[Tosh]

My e mail was hacked either overnight or early this morning.
A friend mailed me to say what had happened but I realised anyway when I received two e mails from myself.
I e mailed everybody in my contacts list to tell them what had happened and placed the warning in the subject box as well as in the  message.
It is not only attachments some of them show links to be clicked on.
If you are at all suspicious just delete them from the In Box list before you are tempted to click on them.
Tosh

[DaveR]

Or...get a Mac and avoid all this PC virus nonsense completely. 

[rhos.rover]

Or...get a Mac and avoid all this PC virus nonsense completely. 

I will ask Father Christmas for a Mac, Dave. But I don’t think I’ve been that good. 

[DaveR]

  You can but ask....

[Ian]

Don't forget you can get a Mac for comparatively little these days - Mac Mini is about £500 - and you can use your old display, mice and keyboards until you can get new ones.

[Yorkie]

Received an e.mail today purporting to come from o2 suggesting that my DD had failed and to call them at a certain number or take a link to another web page in order to pay my bill.   Realising it was a scam I went to the web page out of curiosity and found that it looked very authentic and could fool some people.   I then passed the email to o2 security. 
 :rage: