Rant: Hype/spin/confusion marketing/customer abuse

Up to 100?? I've saved at least 400 this year.

Yes. It's really no hassle, it takes an hour or two of your time at most.

Ignore the marketing bollox. There are various comparison sites, all you need to know is approx the number of KwH per year you use and they'll find you the cheapest deal. See:

Depends on your usage is obviously. When I last did comparisons any differences were of the order of £10 pa.

Journalists normally quote the website company uswitch to get the "upto £100" figure. Of course they have a vested interest in people using their site. I wish journos would be a bit more critical and do the sums themselves to give a more nuanced picture.

Personally I went for the provider with the best customer service record. Stats are on the energywatch website I believe. One provider had by far the fewest compaints.

"Andy Pandy" wrote

Is "the cheapest", also "the best"?

And for how long is it the best? How often do you have to check? How many of these non-switchers have internet connections?

Tiddy Ogg.

The oft quoted savings are over-hyped: they make sense for those living in draughty 4 floor/8 bedroom Victorian detached houses using masses of KWh. But those who use less have very little to gain.

I got the standing charge removed from my bill w/o any increase in the unit price. One phone call & no need to switch.

10?? Do you live in a shoebox? Or maybe I need my insulation looking at...

I've just put my annual usage in. I got a fixed tariff in 2004 which was excellent value, I pay about 800 a year for gas and electric. Current quotes on uswitch are between 1051 and 1491 for my usage (about 33,000 kwh gas and 5,300 kwh electric).

So I'm saving about 700 a year from switching - some of that is because of the cap but, as per above, current quotes vary by over 400.

You get the same "product" regardless of the "supplier". You're only choosing who bills you. I've not noticed any significant difference in the level of customer service or quality of the billing with any of the suppliers I've used.

How long is a piece of string?

I used to check twice a year or so - but I've not checked for ages since I know nothing will be able to touch the capped rate I'm on. It takes about 5 mins to check on one of the comparison sites. Then you can decide if the savings are worthy of further examination.

"Andy Pandy" wrote

You only tend to notice the true quality of customer service when something goes "wrong". Has anything ever gone "wrong" for you?

Bitstring , from the wonderful person Tim said

Yes, BGas billing is complete cr&p IME .. however as the poster above said, the supply side is the same. Even the meter readers are the same. If the lights go out you ring the same number. The only bit which varies is the tariff and the billings system. Oh, and did I mention BGas are the pits?? (Not aided by the fact their written correspondence centre is in Southampton, whereas all phonecalls go to Cardiff, whereas my local billings centre is someplace else like Manchester. The management of this fiasco is presumably in Bangalore).

Nope. Nothing that wasn't sorted out "quickly" and "easily" anyway.

I live in a shoebox and have used 6627 Kwh average (heating not cooking) over the past few years. I'm with Southern Electric variable DD (9.47p/Kwh)

According to

for all -

variable tariffs (13 suppliers) -43% to 13% (-£269 to £80)

capped tariffs (4 suppliers) -12% to 5% (-£74 to £31)

According to

for fixed monthly DD -

variable tariffs (2 suppliers) 8% to 11% (£51 to £72)

capped tariffs (2 suppliers) 6% to 7% (£38 to £43)

It seems like

has comparisons for far more suppliers than

Far more likely you were on a crap deal.

I don't know about gas but £800 for 5,300 Kwh of electricity is crap. That's 60% over my standard rate (Southern Electric DD) and I haven't switched.

Where do you get that from given the above figures ?

£1600 - £1051 = £549 £1600 - £1491 = £109

Daytona

Ratings are included with the quotes on both uswitch and energyhelpline.

Daytona

It took me less than 1 minute for each site. All you need to know is the postcode the Kwh and your current plan.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that they don't take loads of contact details until after you had chosen a plan.

Daytona

That's 800 for *both* gas and electric.

1491 (which IIRC was the default suppliers) - 800 (which is what I'm paying).

But I bet that this isn't a like for like comparison.

The first will be cash payment to separate suppliers

The last will be direct debit with same supplier dual fuel discount.

Usually, you can make 80-90% of the predicted saving without changing both supplier just by choosing the direct debit dual fuel option with one of them.

The uswitch website is biased to make you switch with them. They have to do something to justify their near billion dollar value (god know why someone though it worth that)

tim

Look again at the subject line. I rest my case.

Tiddy Ogg.

Interesting, I wasn't aware of that.

A quick search reveals -

Bought by The E W Scripps Company for £210m - 16/3/6

Revenue £23-26 EBITDA £6-9M

uSwitch also owns UpMyStreet.com

Daytona

Nope - one of the first questions is payment methods, and I always specify DD. Those quotes are all DD payments.

Sorry - but that's just rubbish. The dual fuel discount is usually trivial - on my current deal it's 10.50 a year. The DD discount can be significant but I only ever look at DD quotes.

I've never used them to actually do the switch - but they're good for giving you an idea what the cheapest deals out there are. The last time I switched in early

2004 they pointed me at Scottish Power's standard rate, but on inspecting the SP web site I found that their capped rate was actually cheaper than their standard rate! Even their own calculator got this wrong - so it's always worth manually working out what you'll be paying - the tariffs aren't that complicated and a simple spreadsheet will help.