When ever you change supplier the process is as follows
1 give notice to your existing supplier that you intend to change you do not give them a meter reading or need to tell them who you are moving to.
You have 28 days to sign up with another supplier during which time they have to maintain your original tariff
2 Sign up with your chosen new supplier who will instrruct you how and when to provide a meter reading.
3 The new supplier does the leg work of contacting your old supplier and giving them the reading
4 your old supplier makes up your final bill, send this and then collects payment.
5 new supplier starts collecting payments (if DD) and bases bills on the transfer reading. The whole process may take up to a couple of months.
This is really strange Nick cos I also ploughed my details into uswitch and Powergen came out only £5-88 more expensive. Maybe it's because I am on the Dual Fuel option; I see their EnergyEssentials is £58 more expensive.
You seem unfortunate in your dealings with Amerada. I found them very helpful at all times. Once I queried their method of billing and they gave me an ex gratis payment of £5 - can't be bad.
The Daily Mail link in an earlier post certainly suggests that some people will be much worse off. I was surprised that mine was so small as the gas increase from 1.142 to 1.416 kwhr is quite a hike. But I think this is offset by the £36 dual fuel, one bill, online discounts.
I've been with Amerada for 18 months. Their administration is really crap but the juice has never failed to turn up and they are cheap. I have yet to receive my letter.
Examples of poor account management include.....
- I set a monthly payment fee which I knew to be about right, from the outset. Amerada failed to collect any money for the first three months, thus putting me into an arrears situation.
- I adjusted the payment amount to recover the shortfall but each time I changed the amount they then failed to take anything that month. This led to a spiral of continual arrears and amendments before I finally worked out how to play them.
- Even though the service is supposed to be managed online they always initiate communication by snail mail. Why? Email is quicker and easier to reply to.
- Why is it impossible to phone them without paying 1 per minute for the privelege? I wanted to scream at them for their incompetence but was not going to pay for the pleasure. Perhaps that's exactly why they do it:-)
- As things began to settle down I still needed to make adjustments to the monthly payments. They were very slow to respond to my changes and sometimes completely misread what I input. e.g. I was once so far in credit that I wanted to make my payments just 2 per month on one of the services. This was input to their website so there could be no doubt as to the amount. They sent me a letter agreeing to the new figure of 20. Why? I had specified 2 and the website still reflected this. This sort of thing happened twice.
- Despite the website having a field in which to input the payment date they have never ever acknowledged the dates I've supplied. Even when I queried it they ignored that too.
They really are/were a shambles.
Normally I would never endure service of this poor quality but at the end of the day the lights and heating worked and I was saving money. The only downside was to my blood pressure and that's OK now too.
I must admit that I've had NO problems with Amerada supplying my gas. In my experience the WORST customer service has been provided by nPower. Apparently their call centre is in Newcastle but their fax machine is in Kent(?) and there seems to be no communication between the two offices.
nPower have also recently taken over the supply of energy for my employer - ignoring existing terms and meter readings.
It seems that the much vaunted competition in the energy market is going to lead to consolidation and we'll be left again with one or two suppliers who will then carve up the market. As usual the poor consumer will be left with poor customer service and nowhere else to go. Will OfGEN do anything about it? I doubt it - look at OfTel and the 192 c***-up!
Just received my Amerada letter, and have just spent some time on the comparision sites, which have confirmed that (a) Amerada was still by far the cheapest option for me (b) PowerGen's new tarrifs are way off the mark and (c) next best to Amerada are Atlantic, so looks like that's where I'm headed.
Anyway... During my internet travels I came across the following link which might be of interest:
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(if it doesn't work, it's a deep-link to a page on the following site:
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regarding this whole issue. It also mentions that if you manage your switch through 'Simply Energy' (0800 093 9884) you get paid a cashback of 10 GBP per service, or 15 GBP if you pick Atlantic (so that's 60 quid if you switch both gas and electric). Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick; reckon I'll give it a go! (Simply Energy have a website at
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but you apparently you have to phone to get this cashback deal).
[By the way, the above site also mentions the Telecom Plus deal referred to by someone else; it says "...it has the very lowest energy supply charges, providing you use its home telephone or mobile phone service. Unfortunately, for all but the lowest use telephone users, the extra expense of its costly telephone service outweighs the energy savings"]
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