Find The Cheapest Gas & Electricity Plus Cashback Article Discussion

reference the article cheecking on Staywarm. U.K.Power don`t list Staywarm as a supplier.Any ideas?

Back in May, Martin gave us the green light to switch into the falling prices for electricity.
14May I took the plunge to switch from Scottish Power to a National Power deal that offers a deferred rebate after 12 months, called "sign on line".
25May Acknowledgement of request to change confirming type of account account.
30May Welcome bumph from NP. giving me my CONTRACT number.
13June NP send the confirmation of prices and terms and a here we go date.
??June Phone call from SP offering new wonderful prices on similar net account.
(my response was "Its a shame you did not think of this earlier" See below.)
04July (Arrived 06Jul):
YOUR NPOWER ELECTRICITY PRICES:
"Thank you for choosing npower as your new electricity supplier. However, we've
now discovered that we cannot set up your account on the product and tariff you
requested, because of the type of meter you have.
Instead we've set up your electricity account on our STANDARD ELECTRICITY tariff"

Let me translate: We at NP have unilaterally decided to increase your charges by
10% for what used to be standing charge.
11% for day time electricity.
16% for economy 7 night time electricity.

06July Being the reasonable sort of chap that I am, at my expense, I telephoned to get
further clarification of the strange dispute that NP seems to be having with EDF the
installers of my meter.
"Um err err I'll get someone to phone you back, our system is down"

Watch this space!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

John

Last week I listened to two economists who have done some ground breaking research and are advising companies to maximise profit by making quite sure they are NOT the cheapest supplier.

It seems to be a variation of the effect that Adam Smith (the bloke on the back of the new 20 pound notes) noticed: When businesses get together the conversation soon switches to how to rip off their customers.

It works like this: The world is full of idiots who go about muttering "you only get what you pay for"; let us call this type "numptie" for short.
Now provided you make you tariff sufficiently complex, lazy old numptie will never notice he is being over charged. So get together with your rivals to agree a complex structure of different accounts, of which the numptie account is the most profitable. Don't try to sell the low profit accounts, they are just there in case old numptie wakes up and eventually realises he is being over charged. If some MP or Government department starts complaining, on numpties behalf, the cheap account is there to deflect criticism.
I suppose we should not be surprised that this technique, used on savings accounts for years, is rife in the phone business and now in the energy supply business.

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

I suppose we should not be surprised that this technique, used on savings accounts for years, is rife in the phone business and now in the energy supply business.

You forgot to add the pay to receive formerly "free" tv programmes, Murdoch is a master of numptie control.

Virgin in response have taken to selling "Medium" "Large" and "Extra Large" packages + masses of small print, for TV Phone and Broadband sevices, just to confuse your numpties further.

Life through "competition" has unfortunately become a constantly changing mobile phone tariff, and I have to wonder if we are on the right one.

PS forgot to add:-

Thank the Gods for Ebico,
at least WYSIWYG

Hi, a bit new to this, but i am with npower and realise that i need to switch... I have looked at Quidco and discovered that i can get £50 cash back from Powergen and Tesco club points, They are only second on the comparison sites so it looks good so far...but i only joined npower back end of last year. is there a lock-in for how long you have to stay with a company or could you play the energy companies against each other and get cash back every time you do?

many thanks allsinginganddancing
paying off overdraft - 1 Eating chocolate - 0 (sigh......)

allsinginganddancing wrote: »

Hi, a bit new to this, but i am with npower and realise that i need to switch... I have looked at Quidco and discovered that i can get £50 cash back from Powergen and Tesco club points, They are only second on the comparison sites so it looks good so far...but i only joined npower back end of last year. is there a lock-in for how long you have to stay with a company or could you play the energy companies against each other and get cash back every time you do?

many thanks allsinginganddancing
paying off overdraft - 1 Eating chocolate - 0 (sigh......)

there isnt a lock in as such just sometimes if ur signed up under a certain tariff they might be an opt out clause which u have to pay for i know grittish bas have this, but cant comment on others