Telegraph miscalculates the cost of working from home - Full Fact

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A Telegraph article claimed working from home will add more than £2,500 a year to the average household’s energy costs. But the calculation was flawed, because it assumed that a year was made of 12 Januaries.

will begin, “the average household will be paying £580 a month for their energy, compared to £789 for those who are working from home”.

says: “Working from home during the colder months of the year is obviously going to be more expensive as employees are likely to need their heating on during the day.” . If these happen, the additional energy costs of working from home will also rise. But of course the future prices are unknown.Uswitch hasn’t published the full details of how it calculated its estimates.

This suggests that people who work from home would use their heating for about 2.5 hours more than unoccupied households, not 10 hours more, as Uswitch assumed.

 

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hjhirani The Telegraph miscalculates. The story of the last 40 years on that paper.

johnandi Bless the Telegraph - never let a good lie go to waste when it can enrich their elite backers.

And the Telegraph underestimated the costs of commuting too? Goodness, I *am* surprised.

GossiTheDog It added $2500 a year to my coffee budget.

To be fair, Ovo Energy tried to set my monthly direct debit based on there being 12 Decembers, so it’s not unheard of.

paging BadDataTakes

Working from laptop I - save on commuting - save on gas - save on insurance - don’t mile out my car - save on work clothes - save on lunches - choose my company And.. I work from Halifax, Munich, Hong Kong, Los Angeles; seriously the ONLY downside is .. wait nope.. no downside.

It’s not full really, is it?

That's about what you'd spend on commuting a year. Either by public transport fares or car costs. (Car costs higher than PT)

BestForBritain How do costs compare when cost of traveling is taken into account?

Nice data correction article:)

😂🤣😭 and that people would voild a full kettle every time they wanted a cuppa and that they'd use the oven to make their lunch (which they don't do at work) rather than make a sandwich and everyone uses desktops rather than laptops...

Going to the office adds £5400 to my commuting bill (a figure I’m expecting to increase by 10% in January)

They used an outdated model for their calculations. Blacksmiths.

Ha!

It's almost like the Telegraphs owners have investments in business properties that are starting to lose money...

stroppypanda The Telegraph, distort the truth?!?

My partner and I spent £2500 a year between us parking at work. That doesn't include the petrol for both cars. We are still much better off even if it did add £2,500.

And redwood complaining about traffic jam caused by these folks going to work in cars.

stroppypanda I’ve worked from home through 2 winters now. I got my useage down by being a little bit more thoughtful . Didn’t need the heating on in the day.

My thermostat has been set at 16C for the last 25 or so years - before & after I retired.

therachelwise

Clearly this was an honest mistake and obviously no hidden agenda 🙄

AKA Tory-Ru propaganda in full swing…

I expect government policy will be to make every month January and every day Monday. A perpetual gloom, after sunset but too early to stop working.

I’ve worked full time from home in a corporate career for 18 years. It’s saved me money

Anything to help those poor commercial landlords

And in any case, commuting 5 days a week would cost me £4800 so WFH is still cheaper. Lol.

Saves 4 grand on crap parking and aneamic pret sandwiches though so swings and roundabouts!

Remind me, how much central London property does the surviving Barclay brother own?

This might be a compelling argument (if believable), if it wasn’t for the fact that my annual train season ticket would cost £4,500. So I’m still £2k better off working from home

Miscalculates? They didn’t. They new exactly what they were doing. Too late the misinformation is out there.

I read the figures - they were clear lunacy, especially to anyone who had been WFH already and had a benchmark.

CarolineSmileey Telegraph, never knowingly on the side of the 99%! Who would have thought a paper owned by billionaires would take such a stance?

The labour calculator is out again

I think a lot of people whonhave been skiving at home for the last 2 years will be back in the office this winter.

And, if I may suggest, they may have also assumed 7 weekdays...

Intentional misinformation from a right wing intent on forcing people back into the office.

StevePeers The Telegraph get something wrong as they work themselves into a swivel eyed, fleck lipped lather about layabouts working from home. How could that happen?

It also presumes that there is nobody home during the day when working in the office.

FullFact, you have one big major problem when it comes to impartiality! You are funded by globalist organisations so why would anyone take you seriously.

There's only one January?! Well this changes everything!

It is the torygraph after all, have you seen our gov? Is it any surprise their news outlet is also a joke? 😂

Bet it doesn't account for the thousands in travel expenses too.

Don’t think I’ve ever seen Januaries written down before. It looks weird.

The Telegraph never knowingly lies 😉

dsmitheconomics So what, a season ticket into London is about £10k

jdportes In other news - The Telegraph lied, coincidentally, in the interests of rich property owners & developers.

My bill went down when wfh as I was there to prevent anyone turning on the heating during the day when I'd usually be in the office. A balmy 16 degrees and a jumper is sufficient

Lol. That was no mistake.

What a surprise!

There seems to be a fair bit of propaganda going around about this. I kept records of energy use throughout the 2010s and the effect of WfH was actually to reduce gas use. Electricity use went up slightly as expected as I was using computer equipment throughout the day.

If it's in the Torygraph we can automatically assume that the information is flawed.

Also they didn't factor in other forms of transport. Train peak-time season tickets aren't cheap either.

Frances_Coppola It added more than £2500 a year to my energy costs, but I may be an outlier, of course.

Yep that's what the Telegraph do, lie for the Tories.

🤣🤡

Er what? “Its press release says that its calculations assume households where someone works from home would use their heating system for 24 hours a day”

Genius!!

How is that even possible?

Frances_Coppola That's genuinely hilarious

Easy mistake to make!

Telegraph doing Tory commercial property landlords bidding more like

Sounds about right for the Telegraph.

Deliberately miscalculated. It's the telegraph. They don't make mistakes. They print lies.

🤣

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