10 Top Tips to Survive Recession

So it’s not if, but when. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), we’ll be in a recession (definition: two successive quarters of negative growth) by the end of the year. The British Chambers of Commerce says it’ll be within the coming year.  Business survival will depend on how overheads are managed. Here are our 10 top tips for keeping on top and staying on top of utility costs.

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Domestic versus Non-domestic Rates - Part 2

A survey of small businesses by 02 tells of a huge increase in small firms abandoning their offices in favour of working from home. 10% of those surveyed have chosen not to renew an office lease and a further two-thirds are considering giving theirs up over the next 12 months.

Most suppliers (although Scottish Power is a notable exception) offer business rates to companies run from domestic premises – whether limited or sole traders. These tend to be 01 (single rate) & 02 (two rate/economy 7) profile meters and most suppliers are happy to accept the customer’s word that they operate a business, others require proof such as a Yell.com printout but this is a formality.

‘Buyer beware’ however…

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Charities Seething with Injustice

Businesses – in the eyes of utility companies – include just about any non-domestic property including churches, charities, community centres and all sorts of not-for-profit organisations, often run by volunteers on a tight budget. Which is why the new method of charging by the water companies is drawing so much criticism...

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Hair Salons 'Rush' To Make It Cheaper

Case Study: Already with 34 salons across London and the South East and no less than seven British Hairdressing Awards, 'Rush' is now opening new sites at the rate of two a month and has a goal to open 200 over the next five years. Nine months ago Rush contacted Make It Cheaper for help in what had escalated into a complex and time-consuming task - comparing utility prices for each site - particularly as some of its business electricity contracts were on much higher rates than others.

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Bring Back energywatch!

The British Chambers of Commerce is adding its weight to the concerns over the demise of energywatch by calling for a new watchdog to be dedicated to assisting businesses. It says it is ‘totally unacceptable that hard pressed businesses are left so open to exploitation by energy suppliers’ who it accuses of a ‘very apparent lack of transparency and fairness in their dealings with business’. With 32,000 calls to energywatch from businesses seeking help and advice every year, it has a point.

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Dont Pass on Overheads, Challenge Them!

Several surveys out this week claim that SMEs are laying off staff and pushing up prices to counteract the higher overheads everyone is incurring on business electricity, gas and other utilities. 

Wait! There is another way. SMEs are collectively paying £2 billion more than they need to for electricity alone because of their poor choice of contracts. Make It Cheaper has a free contract checking service for people who want to know whether they could be paying less for their business utilities… but either don’t know where to start or don’t have the patience to shop around all the different suppliers. It won’t cost you a penny, it’s impartial, friendly and entirely without obligation. Here’s how it works...

 

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Sign Up To Our Newsletter

If you would like to receive regular news from Make It Cheaper about business utility costs, why not sign up to our newsletter? As an impartial price comparison and switching service it’s our job to find out (and tell you) where the best deals are to be had - not least with the cheapest business electricity prices. 

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How Will The Domestic Rises Affect Your Business?

You may not notice your business energy bills going up immediately in the wake of the latest round of domestic price rises but don’t think that means you’ve miraculously escaped. Far from it. Business tariffs are fixed for a period of between one to five years and reviewed / renewed near the end of the contract. During this renewal period your supplier will write to you with the new fixed rate they propose to charge, taking into account ALL of the rounds of price rises that have been imposed since your last renewal.

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Tariff-fatigue: New Figures from Make It Cheaper

As an impartial price comparison service with a comprehensive grasp of the SME market, it’s our job to know about every single tariff there is going for business electricity and gas. Staggeringly for a market with so little competition, we have counted over 500,000 different tariffs (no typo, that's half a million). Exactly which ones your business is eligible for depends on lots of variables: all those numbers on your bill beginning with an ‘S’, how much energy you use in year, your postcode, business type, credit rating etc etc. This presents a mindboggling minefield for anyone attempting to shop around and compare the cheapest business electricity prices for themselves.

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Cutting Costs Doesn't Have to Mean Jobs

KPMG’s quarterly national business confidence survey shows that 53% of businesses intend to reduce headcount (up from 29% three months ago). However, a survey of SMEs by Carbon Trust also found more employers are looking to save money on energy than redundancies or reducing staff bonuses with 69% either actively cutting energy costs or considering doing so.

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Why Fuel Bills Are Going Up

Insightful article in today's Evening Standard by Robert Lea suggesting a whole range of reasons why energy prices are rising but that none of the suppliers will readily admit to.

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Firms with 'critical' problems up nearly 700%

Almost eight times as many companies are heading towards insolvency than at this point last year, according to a report published by the business restructuring specialist Begbies Traynor, in a further sign of a sharply worsening economic climate. It says that during the second quarter of the year, 4,258 companies faced "critical" problems (businesses with county court judgments of more than £5k against them or winding-up petitions). That compares to just 542 the same time last year. Begbies say about 15% of companies with critical problems will be insolvent within a year.

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Workplace Temperature Guide

The Summer’s finally arrived with weather forecasters predicting temperatures reaching 30ºC by the end of the week. There is no statutory limit to the upper temperature in workplaces but The Chartered Institute for Building Services Engineers suggests a comfortable office temperature range in summer of 22-24ºC.

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Energy crunch bites as fuel bills rise by a third

So there it is in black & white: the news we were all dreading - reported in today’s Times newspaper - prices for gas and electricity are to increase dramatically. They are going up by a third from next month and predicted to rise up to 60% in two years. So, business bill payers, if you do one thing today…

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Breaking News: More Price Rises on the Way

Alarm bells ringing tell us that there’s another round of big price rises for domestic electricity customers being announced imminently (possibly from today). As history dictates, this will lead to a knock-on effect across all tariffs, including commercial electricity, and mean that every business will be automatically hit with much higher rates from their suppliers when its time to renew their contracts.

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Putting the Record Straight

It seems that Make It Cheaper is upsetting a lot of other business energy brokers because of the exclusive rates it’s negotiated with suppliers. In a desperate attempt to win business with their more expensive rates, unscrupulous brokers are prepared to try and misinform those shopping around about rates and contract terms that are, frankly, already over-complicated enough. So for the record...

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BT unveils 1.5bn super-fast broadband plan

Good news from BT for SMEs and those running businesses from home as today it announced it is investing £1.5bn rolling out super-fast broadband to 10m addresses by 2012.

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This Week's Business Energy Surveys

Two separate surveys out this week - both polling opinions from over 1,000 small to medium sized enterprises...

One, from the Federation of Small Businesses, tell us that 57 percent have made complaints to their energy companies: billing problems (46%), difficulty switching supplier (24%), inaccurate meter reading (21%), customer service (9%). Only half felt they had their complaints dealt with satisfactorily.

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Schools: Latest Victim of New Water Charges

Schools are now being charged for water which falls off buildings and drains from the land under a new charging scheme introduced to businesses and public buildings which have a water meter.

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Ofgem's Nine Key Questions

Regulator, Ofgem, has published a series of key questions that small business electricity customers should ask their supplier about their contract. Just reading the questions (listed below) gives you an idea of how complex these contracts can be and why so many people become unwittingly stuck on extortionate rates. For those in any doubt, call us free on 0800 970 0077 and one of our independent experts will be happy to guide you through the process of saving money.

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Maxy Minimises Bills

When local businessman, Mr S Kumar, took over the Maxy Superstore, a community convenience store in Croydon, he fully expected to inherit a can of worms sorting out the bills. He already owns a network of four other shops in the area and has fallen foul of the energy suppliers’ Terms & Conditions in the past.

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Gulp! Bills to Make Your Eyes Water

Businesses are seeing their costs jump because of a change in the way water companies calculate their bills. Charges under the new system are for the ‘drained area occupied’, rather than ‘rateable value’.

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Which? Helplines Report

Which? recently listed all those organisations using higher-cost numbers for helplines including: Eon, Npower, Scottish & Southern Energy, Scottish Power, British Gas, Tiscali, TalkTalk, AOL, Orange, Direct Line and more. Tut-tut!

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Don't Get Caught Out By The Small Print

The importance of using a broker to steer you through the process of switching business electricity supplier was underlined in a report about the energy market's inefficiencies in today's Daily Telegraph.

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Killer-Watt switch or be hoodwinked

With a record 10 consecutive months of wholesale energy price rises, you can expect a shock when your supplier next attempts to renew your contract... for which they don’t even need your signature. You can easily avoid this trap by switching supplier and taking advantage of ‘new customer’ rates which are half the price for business electricity and gas.

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Small Business Energy Bills Double

Business electricity and gas customers are seeing their bills double as suppliers react to unprecedented wholesale price.

Annual renewal rates of 24p/kWh (electricity) and 6p/kWh (gas) are not uncommon in the wake of an upward wholesale trend, now heading for a record tenth consecutive month*. This compares to highs of 12p/kWh and 3p/kWh this time last year and means that bills for those businesses coming out of one year contracts are about to double.

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