Switching from Economy 7

penguine

We have Economy 7 but don't have storage heaters, never have had since we bought our flat in 1998. We don't run any appliances between midnight and 7am (the washing machine would wake us up if we tried it) so can't take advantage of the lower cost then, so we would like to switch from E7.

Has anyone done this and if so did you have any problems? I'm guessing we'd probably have to pay to have the new meter installed.

paceinternet

You will see from many other posts that some suppliers want to change the E7 meter and maybe charge you, and others are ok to keep the E7 meter and add the readings together to get a total.
BG seem able to add the readings together and do not charge you, so consider asking if that is the same for your area and check how their rates compare. The process is that you make the change over to them on E7, and as soon as you are consuming from them, phone and ask to be changed to a normal tariff and the change happens that day.

penguine

Thanks, we are already with BG (dual fuel) but thinking about looking for a cheaper supplier. I guess if we do want to switch we'll need to check with new supplier about whether they'll allow us to come off E7 or add readings together.

notbritishgas

Penguine, This is hot off the press because last week we changed from E7 to single rate.
We have been on E7 for about 18 years (why the builders put this meter in I do not know, or perhaps I do as they could have got a back hander from the then electricity board). Like you we do not have storage heaters but have gas central heating.
Its only when I came onto this forum that I started to check my usage and to try to run things at night, as our night period was 1am to 8 am we could put the dishwasher, washing machine and tumble drier on in the morning. Despite our best efforts we were only using 34% of our electric at night and on our tariff this worked out being between £5 and £10 per year more expensive than single rate.
Hence the switch. We are on npower and they changed the meter free of charge, or so they said.:rolleyes:

penguine

Thanks! We may look at switching to npower then.

notbritishgas

penguine wrote: »

Thanks! We may look at switching to npower then.[/quote]


I would hate to have that on my conscience!:o You should look into other things about npower apart from the free upgrade of meter.