£250 extra per year to cap??

Benson

Ive just done a comparison on Energyhelpline to cap my gas prices my additional spend would be £250.00 for duel fuel.

Is it really going to be worth capping and paying an additional £250 per year for the priviledge or are the bills likely to soar above this?

I really have no idea who to believe anymore!!!!!!!!


Help!

ashleyk

I've just been wondering exactly the same thing. Currently I spend less than £50 a month between gas and electric, even though I work from home and a quick check on the energy helpline shows that the cheapest fixed cap price would still amount to about £237 extra which is a 47% increase in costs and that only covers me until next October anyway. Its far from clear to me that we will gain something by switching now. Are we missing something?

craggs

im the same on this

im with scottishpower online 4 due fuel,and to go on there cap it will cost me around £230 per year more.around 30% rise

So is it bite the bullet and wait or go on the higher amount,scottishpower have a fee if you come out of it early,which is a bummer if the price dont go up or they do and not as high as first thought

amcluesent

Those %tage figures seem high, then again EON increased their price protected tariff by 4% yesterday.

You should get dual fuel and DD discounts with a protected tariff, maybe not factored in by the price comparison sites. I needed to use a spreadsheet to understand the tariffs from just one supplier.

craggs

amcluesent wrote: »

Those %tage figures seem high, then again EON increased their price protected tariff by 4% yesterday.

You should get dual fuel and DD discounts with a protected tariff, maybe not factored in by the price comparison sites. I needed to use a spreadsheet to understand the tariffs from just one supplier.

i now what you mean,think it get now on my tarrif 5.25 a quarter discount so think its same for the price fix,,online managment and direct debit payment.

so take the £21 of my original figure of £230 and it still gives me a £209 rise

i dont no where martin has got the "about 10%" for a capped tarriff more from on this one.ive done separate quotes with e-on and npower and they are more

blue_monkey_2

I've been thinking about this and have been checking myself on the prices for capped. If I go onto a capped rate then I save £50 a year, if I go onto the paperless tarriff I save around £288 a year! So that is £230 a more per year to go on capped - plus the penalty if you leave early.

That being said, the supermarkets have just decreased their prices as the price of oil has dropped, so who are we to believe? Up to 60% rise? Could this just be a little ploy by the gas/eleccy suppliers to get you to go capped and then pay £250 more per year 'just in case'? If the petrol suppliers are dropping the price then why not the household fuel suppliers? Surely their prices must be dropping too. Smells like a scam to me to get everyone to panic buy the capped rates. Surely Martin did not get sucked into this now?

I could not even get the SP website to work properly last night so I am guessing that everyone else has had the same idea and wants to cap ASAP.

ashleyk

blue_monkey wrote: »

That being said, the supermarkets have just decreased their prices as the price of oil has dropped, so who are we to believe? Up to 60% rise? Could this just be a little ploy by the gas/eleccy suppliers to get you to go capped and then pay £250 more per year 'just in case'? If the petrol suppliers are dropping the price then why not the household fuel suppliers? Surely their prices must be dropping too. Smells like a scam to me to get everyone to panic buy the capped rates. Surely Martin did not get sucked into this now?

That is pretty much the way I see it. I am with Scottish Power using their online energy saver 4 and its significantly cheaper than any capped tariff regardless of the supplier. Prices may rise by a big chunk but for how long? I agree the whole thing sounds like a scam. Most likely if I had opted for a price cap 12 months ago I would have already lost about £250.

ashleyk

Just as a little update on this thread, I checked recently online at energyhelpline.com and for all these months it has still been the cheapest deal going eclipsing any capped prices by quite a margin. Its now saying that my cheapest option would be a switch to Npower saving us about £40 a year but knowing some of the headaches experienced by friends who went with Npower I'd be extremely reluctant to switch.

I believe that Scottish power have said they will be cutting prices early next year, so overall I think it made sense to keep a cool head and not go leaping for a price capped deal when everybody was in a panic. How do others feel now in hindsight? The majority of the price rises were on gas which is low usage for us anyway with a modern well insulated house, so we've saved money.