BT to raise call charges by 10%

According to an article on the BBC website today, BT are planning to increase call charges by 10% and its monthly line rental by 50p from the beginning of October. The cost of connecting a call will go up by a penny from 9.9p to 10.9p and the daytime rate by half a penny from 5.9p to 6.4p a minute.

As you might expect, however there are a of raft ways in which BT customers can avoid or minimise these increases, for example by signing up to longer-term contracts, moving to bundled inclusive packages, paying annually rather than quarterly or monthly, or opting to receive their bills electronically. Which is all well and good if you’ve got the time and knowledge to obectively review your bills and work out which are the best options for your organisation, including whether to move to an alternative supplier.  Auditel clients who use BT will, of course, be contacted by their consultants as a matter of course to discuss recommendations for ensuring these price rises don’t impact on them.

Are energy issues a board level concern in your organisation?

Many thanks to our colleague David Gray for letting us know about a series of podcasts NPower has put together in conjunction with the Major Energy Users Council (MEUC), aimed at helping organisations better understand four key energy issues. The topics covered are: ‘Security of Supply’, ‘Managing Energy purchasing’, ‘Managing Carbon Reduction’ and ‘Renewables’, all of which have significant cost implications and should be incorporated into business strategy.

As Wayne Mitchell, head of corporate sales at npower says,  “As staff issues have risen up the corporate agenda HR directors have taken a seat on the board and some are now even taking the step to appoint IT directors, but energy isn’t always a board priority.  We believe that time has come – energy now brings with it financial, carbon, operational and even reputational considerations that deserve board level attention, but we know that it’s not always clear exactly how such considerations affect the running of a business.”

Many organisations, large and small, already have bitter experience of rising energy costs over the last few years and, as we’ve seen from recent posts, energy companies are busy reviewing accounts to see if they can raise (in some cases very significant) back bills. Add to this the new burden of Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) compliance for organisations with half-hourly supplies, energy usage management, renewable and green energy issues and it’s not hard to see why so many organisations outsource responsibility for managing this complex and time-consuming business cost area to experts like Auditel.

Watch your back bills

Talking to a couple of our consultants this week it’s becoming clear that all the major energy companies are keen to claw in every penny they can in these hard times, which is why they have set up teams whose remit is to go back over business energy bills for up to 6 years. We’ve seen a number of cases in which these teams are generating new bills for old, and claiming tens of thousands of pounds from their business clients. The good news is that these bills are frequently wrong for a wide range of reasons so, if you know what you’re doing, you can get them reduced or even cancelled. At Auditel, of course, we do know what we’re doing and have good contacts and relationships with all the major energy suppliers so have had great results for our clients caught in this trap.

For example, one of our clients, the owner of luxury holiday home parks in north Wales, received a £57,000 back bill for one site dating back to 2004, when they acquired it. A thorough investigation revealed a number of billing and administration errors which, when coupled with some tough face-to-face negotiation with the supplier,  brought the invoice down to £21,000, an overall reduction of 63%. Another, food distribution, client received a final bill for a site they had moved out of 15 months previously. The bill was demanding just over £32,000 based on the fact that the energy company had misread the meter for the 5 years our client was in the building. However, after much  time-consuming negotiation we were able to halve this demand.

Supplier credibility serves Auditel clients well

As cost and purchase management consultants it’s often assumed that our focus is just on saving money for our clients. Well, it is, of course. But the Auditel service is so much more. For example, one of our manufacturing clients with a significant energy spend had been trying to move to a more effective rate with an alternative supplier but was being thwated at every attempt by the stringent application of credit checking restrictions. In other words, supplier bureacracy was forcing them to continue paying over the odds. However, by leveraging the contacts and relationships we have built over 16 years as consultants in the energy industry we’ve been able to negotiate a manageable and affordable security deposit arrangement, enabling our client to benefit from both lower energy rates and improved service. I think that’s what you call a win win win situation!

T-Mobile and Orange merge to form ‘Everything Everywhere’