Power Price Comparisons

There are all sorts of sites that will do an overall comparison for you, like uSwitch, but I actually wonder if there is much point to knowing the information it provides or how much each supplier actually charges per unit. This is a very volatile market, where a company that is cheapest today could be dearest in a months time, and vice versa. If you want the cheapest tariff all the time, you'll probably have to shift your supplier ever few months at least, and I wonder if it's worth the hassle.

There's only six providers, so I just go round all of them and get the figures myself. The comparison sites make a load of assumptions that don't necessarily apply, and most of them complain that my gas bill is too low. It's about £6 per year on a nil standing charge tariff. I use practically no gas.

Also a lot of them won't let me put in that I have a nil standing charge dual fuel tarriff for gas and a standing charge dual fuel tariff for electricity.

Some providers, such as the Equitable Billing Company (Ebico), don't appear on comparison sites as they refuse to pay the fees. Ebico have a one-price-for-all approach, there is no standing charge or initially-very-expensive units, and their tariffs are comparable.

I've just switched to them from EON, and am saving just over £100 per annum at current prices.

In message , Terry Fields writes

I've found all the price comparison sites pretty useless, because none of them will give you simple unit prices and thresholds. They all want you to tell them your consumption, and there are so many complications like monthly/quarterly debits, etc. that the whole thing is a jungle. Like others I've just used the sites of the individual energy companies, but even on these the information is awfully hard to find. I think Ofgem ought to require them to have their tariffs presented clearly and up front on their web-sites.

In message , Clive Page writes

Strange. I have found that the sites are the best way of finding details of even my existing tariff! The info on the bills is rarely up to date enough for my forecast spreadsheet to be completely accurate.

Tried:

Well I found that being with provider "A" they recommended I change to provider "B".

On resubmitting my details as if I was with provider "B" they recommended I move to provider "A".

They get a fair old bunce for getting someone to move.

Derek

Or is that a symptom of the "brand new customers only" syndrome where news customers are offered better deals (to entice them to switch) than are offered to existing customers?