A what??
The speed quoted when you order broadband is the maximum speed available - you don't actually get all the bandwidth to yourself but have to share it with other people in the area which will reduce your speed if more than one of you is on at the same time. The technical way of expressing how many people you potentially have to share your broadband with is the contention ratio.
So, if you have a contention ratio of 50:1 (which is quite common) it means that the provider can effectively hang 50 people off the same connection, and so if all 50 of you are online and trying to heavily use the connection at the same time, then you'll only get 1/50th of the speed you are paying for.
Non-home broadband connections might have the same rated speed as home products, but they have a much lower contention ratio (right down to 1:1 contention if you really want to pay for it) to prevent the problem from becoming so pronounced
In practice, contention is rarely a noticeable problem, but if you live in a built up area where broadband is particularly popular, it can be an issue.
I have recently moved to a new (rented) flat and didn't understand why there's two meters and a lot of boxes in the cupboard for electricity. Turns out is some weird 'total control' system whereby ScottishPower use a radio microswitch to switch on and off the power to storage heaters and hot water depending on the weather - this is charged at a different rate to the regular electricity.
Surely this is just economy 7? With this system there are two meters which charge different rates and a radio switch which the electricity company control as you describe. Overnight, your entire electricity supply is switched from one meter to the other and charged at a much cheaper rate, then it's switched back to the standard rate in the morning. This is to make electric heating using night storage heaters and hot water from immersion heaters viable. However, it doesn't just affect your heating equipment; all electricity consumed is charged at the cheaper rate when it's in force - this was why it was so popular to run tumble dryers etc overnight in the 80's.
Even if no other supplier in your area supports economy 7, this shouldn't in itself prevent you from changing - loosing economy 7 just means that you will no longer have cheap rate electricity and will have to run your nightstores at standard rate, if you can tolerate that, then you should be able to change.
Oh yes, and the reason I hate SP is from when I was a student. Lived in another (rented) flat for a year. About 9 months in, I realise we have not had an electricity bill. Phone SP, they say 'Um, no record of you'. They call backk an hour later saying 'Um, we do supply you but your flat got 'lost' in the system. Haven't sent a bill to you for 2 and a half years.'
'But I've only been here for 9 months.'
'Prove it'
I had a little run in with the leccy companys a couple of years back in a student property. Over the summer holiday, an unscrupulous salesperson (funnily enough, from Scottish Power) changed the electricity supply in my room SWEB to Scottish Power, using an assumed name. Upon moving in, I got a bill covering a period during which the property was empty (yet electricity was apparently consumed) from Scottish Power. It was not addressed to me nor to any previous tennant. As SP was cheaper than SWEB I was happy to stay with them and had the account changed into my name. But my landlord then pointed out that under the terms of my tenancy I had to use their nominated energy supplier (which was SWEB) and insisted I change back.
The process of getting the supply changed back to SWEB took until March (I moved in in September). In the meantime, I kept paying Scottish power. But when it finally changed over, SWEB then sent me a bill backdating to cover all of the electricity which I'd allready paid SP for!. Upon talking to both companies and the eventual agreement was that as the supplier should never have been changed, Scottish Power would refund the money I had paid them and I'd pay SWEB's bill.
Although SWEB initially appeared very understanding, happy to wait until I'd got my refund from SP and happy to let me pay it off in instalments, I then noticed that SWEB had priced the electricity at their own rates, which were more expensive than Scottish Power, and thus were trying to get me to pay more money for electricity than the rate which I was being billed at originally (and which they never supplied anyway).
No way was that happening - I was prepared to pay SWEB's rates from the time they took back the supply, but I was only prepared to pay SP's rates for when SP were supplying the electricity. At which point a battle of correspondence and phone calls commenced. Scottish Power refunded every penny I'd paid them and thus considered their interest to be over and refused to have any further involvement in the matter. SWEB wouldn't budge from the figures they were quoting for the SP period (which were significantly greater than the refund I'd got from Scottish Power). My stance became more and more firm, leading to me advising them that as this account was in dispute, I would not be paying any electricity bills until the matter was resolved. This stalement lasted until the end of my tenancy in June until...
...well nothing happened actually. I had decided not to renew my tenancy and as that address had no ties to anywhere I've lived before or since, I just walked away from the situation, ultimately owing SWEB a years' worth of electricity and them with no way of contacting me, tracing me, or enforcing any legal action which they may have taken against me. Can't say that I care either. If they weren't so incompetent as to allow the energy supplier to be changed without confirming it with their original customer in the first place, dragged their heals for 6 months as they showed little interest in correcting the problem, then tried to screw me over to more money than they were entitled, then they'd have their bills from that year. They got greedy, they ended up getting nothing.
