UK Energy Production

[Sachakins]

In UK, standing orders and direct debits are not the same thing.
Direct debit is an agreement with a provider you sign up to. A standing order is an agreement between you and the bank that only you can set up. A provider has no control over a standing order.

 

[mwinfrance]

Ah, long time since I was in the UK, Our "push" thing may be similar to what you call a standing order. I do know that far more French still use cheques than is the case in the UK, you would think that because of that the suppliers would have better method to deal with them. Then again, as their aim is to get as many as possible to let them take the money straight out of the bank account, they would hardly make other methods easy. Bouncing a cheque ( known as a "cheque en bois" wooden cheque ) is not an offence here, but it can get the writer banned from banking.

Post dated cheques are a huge thing here, the french health service is a "re-imbousement" type.You visit a doctor, or hospital , pharmacy etc, you pay them and then you get a percentage of that money paid back into your bank account by the health service within a few days to a few weeks ( private insurance, if you have it "tops up" any difference ). Because of this delay, many people will "post date" cheques for medical or dental work, or expensive medicines. The doctor, dentist etc agree to present the cheque to their bank, only after the patient tells them that they have received the money from the health service.it would be far simpler , cheaper, and less paper shuffling and IT admin, if the system was free at the point of use, and the system then paid the doctors etc.

The doctors , medical practitioners , dentists, pharmacies, hospitals etc do not want that.

 

[Hypnotic Chimera]

BS. You're sloppy use of English again. Your 'typically' refers to the first clause. Admit it, you love lecturing to us and love the sound of your own voice.

Whether I love the sound of my own voice, or whether I actually enjoy the (facepalm) I derive from sometimes stating the bleedin' obvious that grown educated men ought to have a better handle on is utterly irrelevant to the information I sometimes feel brings value to a discussion. It's often badly needed to correct some seriously flawed understandings or viewpoints with either no factual justification or simply blinkered views or poor analysis.

What would it matter who delivers the truth and facts, or whether they enjoy it or not?
Isn't the information the central issue, instead of the person who brings it?
There is a named and titled fallacious argument centred upon an argument which attacks the character of one party in a discussion for a reason.

 

[Superduner]

We're in Aveyron, so a bit further south and have 4x400w panels of the plug and type on the roof. Made and supplied by a French company called Sunethic (who were great to deal with).
We had to get a "work permit" through our mayor who had to then ask the local Grand Figeac authority for their go ahead. They didn't reply to the mayor's application so after a month it was deemed accepted and we went ahead with it.
When we were looking at options we were told that if the panels were at a height of less than 1.8 metres (so on the ground), no permission of any kind was needed to install. In fact Sunethic's default fixing kit is for ground mounting and we had to ask them to supply the roof mounting which was slightly cheaper. I thought that was the case over the whole of France-it's certainly what I understood from what I read online.
In general our local mayor is great to deal with and very accessible.
The installation which faces south has reduced our monthly payments by about 20% and I expect to get back the investment in about 5-6 years. A bit longer now as the price of power has dropped by 18% this month.
The EDF website gives me the option to vary our monthly payments on the fly and in fact we sometimes get an email asking us if we want to reduce it. This month we got a credit of 192€ from last year's over payment.