Help us make Cheap Energy Club better

Former_MSE_Jennifer · 7 June 2017 at 2:03PM

Hi everyone!

My name's Jennifer, and I work on our Cheap Energy Club (where we help our members make sure they’re always on the cheapest energy tariff). Our team is constantly working on the Club to make it quicker and easier to use, both for new and long-standing members. Here's a quick peek of the tool:

Cheap%20Energy%20Club%20screenshot.png

So we want to ask you - what do you really think of Cheap Energy Club? And most importantly - what improvements and/or new features would you like to see?

We'd love to hear how you think we could make comparing or switching your energy tariffs easier. And if you have any great ideas, you could even see them appear on the Club in the near future…

If you haven't used Cheap Energy Club before, you can register here to compare energy tariffs and receive alerts when you can save more money.

Thanks in advance for your help - we can't wait to hear your thoughts and ideas.:)

molerat · 7 June 2017 at 3:19PM

The latest incarnation is the best so far and IMO better than most out there.

Suggestions:
A high / low / normal usage input to show how the different unit price and standing charges affect the overall comparison (but maybe only a few sad nerds would find it useful)
% saving (as shown on EnergyHelpline)

tempus_fugit · 7 June 2017 at 3:36PM

Well, it's a lot better than uswitcch anyway.

SnowMan · 7 June 2017 at 4:17PM

With some of the recent changes I find the Cheap Energy Club very good indeed at the moment. So I'm happy with the Cheap Energy Club as it is.

The real strength over most other comparison sites is the ability to have a an account storing your postcode, existing tariff and usage figures, which makes doing a new comparison super quick.

A few blue sky thoughts as you ask:

Being able to limit the search to new tariffs added in the past month (say) would be good. Quite often you've been in done a comparison fairly recently but come back to see if there are any new tariffs that have come out and are only interested in them.

A search by fixed rate term would be useful. For example it can be useful to search for say fixed rate tariffs of at least 2 (say) years.

Quite a few geeky things I could suggest:

For example you could have a tool to be able to enter monthly usage figures for gas and electricity and then through a graph be able to compare say 2 chosen tariffs based on their cumulative costs over time (e.g. 12 months). This can be useful if you are comparing two similar costing tariffs on a 12 month basis, where the apportionment of cost between standing charge and unit price differs and so the cost varies between summer and winter months.

If an existing tariff is one of the two tariffs in the comparison such a tool can also identify when over the next 12 months the saving arises. For example if you are considering switching from a fixed rate tariff with no exit fee and just a summer period remains to the tariff end, then the existing comparison which will be based on a too high year average usage figure, isn't going to necessarily tell you whether to switch now or when the fixed tariff ends. Obviously you can go back in and change your annual usage figure to your summer usage to check this, and then revert back to your real annual usage, but that's a bit of a faff.

Obviously this would need to be a tool rather than a standard feature (because it overcomplicates for the average user) but it would still make a nice tool.

AFK_Matrix · 7 June 2017 at 4:20PM

I second a tool for working out the yearly/monthly cost of a tarrif. So if I put in that I used 1000 units of Gas and 1000 of Electricity it would then calulate the tarrif cost based on the Standing Charge and unit rates.

molerat · 7 June 2017 at 7:31PM

AFK_Matrix wrote: »

I second a tool for working out the yearly/monthly cost of a tarrif. So if I put in that I used 1000 units of Gas and 1000 of Electricity it would then calulate the tarrif cost based on the Standing Charge and unit rates.

That is exactly what it already does.

footyguy · 7 June 2017 at 8:01PM

Perhaps find a way to alert customers who are looking at dual fuel comparisons that they can save even more money by opting for seperate suppliers ... but only when this is true, which currently is quite frequently.

ladyday · 8 June 2017 at 12:16PM

It would be a great help to persuade my elderly relatives to switch if we could choose the payment method of 'variable monthly direct debit'.

phillw · 8 June 2017 at 1:32PM

footyguy wrote: »

Perhaps find a way to alert customers who are looking at dual fuel comparisons that they can save even more money by opting for seperate suppliers ... but only when this is true, which currently is quite frequently.

Yeah, having to select between Dual fuel/Gas Only/Electricity Only and doing the maths ourselves is a pain. To the point where I doubt many people do it.

Also some way of seeing how two very similar tariffs would change if your usage increased or decreased by a %. As the last time I switched the top 2 tariffs were wildly different in standing order and unit price but they worked out roughly the same for my last years energy usage.

I know some people try to switch suppliers twice a year to take advantage of the high/low usage in winter/summer. That becomes a bit more complex, because you can't guarantee what will be available in 6 months, but you could add an option for calculating prices for less than 6 months. It would need to include any exit fees.

It would be nice if the "how much to save before emailing you" could automatically add in any exit fees from the tariff (I'm assuming it doesn't do this already).

Former_MSE_Jennifer · 8 June 2017 at 2:05PM

Wow - thank you so much for your responses so far, this has already surfaced some fantastic ideas for the team to look into!

And as for the 'nerdy' or 'geeky' ideas (your words SnowMan and molerat

), please keep them coming. We're all energy nerds on the CEC team

I'm also delighted to hear your positive feedback - it's great to know that the improvements we're making are having an impact. Thanks again everyone, I'm looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts!

tstockford · 15 July 2017 at 9:38PM

I agree with footyguy about making it easier to compare dual fuel with separate suppliers. Maybe it could work a bit like buying train tickets as two singles, where you choose your preferred outward and return trains and see the total cost for different combinations, and compare it with the price of a return ticket.

I'm on separate gas and electricity tariffs, so I'd like to be notified if there's a better deal for either of them. At the moment you can only select dual fuel, gas or electricity in the filters.

Similarly, you could make it easier to compare Economy 7 with standard tariffs, and add a filter for suppliers that are happy to add together the day and night readings without changing the meter.

At the moment I have to run two separate comparisons and compare the annual costs myself. Every time I toggle the 'Do you have an Economy 7 meter?' setting, the form resets the name of my current tariff! And then the savings it shows are based on the meter type I'm comparing, rather than on my actual current tariff type. So it would be much less effort if I could leave it set to Economy 7 meter, but then have a separate setting for whether I'm currently billed on an Economy 7 or standard tariff, which would be used to calculate my results.

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