Best tariffs people have found?

sva14

I worked out my yearly usage as below

ELECTRIC - 2956 KWH
GAS - 24,730 KWH

Which is approx £400 Electric and £900 Gas.

I am currently with scottish power on online no standing charge tariff.

Will start comparision sites to find best provider, but was wondering what other people have found to be the cheapest provider with someone wth similar usage?

anniecave

it all depends on what area of the country you're in... (so other people's comparisons will be meaningless really)

I use scottish power as they were the cheapest in our area and they let me cap our prices just before the last price increase.

moonrakerz

You really have to sit down and do some serious number crunching yourself - there are too many variables for each person.

Don't rely on the comparison sites - they are worse than useless. Yesterday one told me that I could save £233 by moving to nPower - another, with exactly the same figures entered said I would be worse off by moving to nPower !

Premier_2

moonrakerz wrote: »

...Don't rely on the comparison sites - they are worse than useless. Yesterday one told me that I could save £233 by moving to nPower - another, with exactly the same figures entered said I would be worse off by moving to nPower !

Really?

What were those figures, which electricity region, against which supplier & tariff and which 2 comparison sites. I'd like to see where the error lies so that we can see which site was actually in error. If it's one that MSE Martin is recommending, I'm sure he would be interested too.

moonrakerz

Really !

I am fairly certain that the first one I tried was "Moneysupermarket" (first on the list !), that was the one that gave the big saving; the other was one of the others on Martin's list - can't remember exactly which one, I'm afraid.
I was only doing it to get into the other provider's websites to get their exact tariffs. I have found differences in the past, but nothing quite this extreme !

Premier_2

Yes small variations can occur.

In the past we have uncovered minor difference because of the sometimes simplistic methods some sites use to allocate discounts - they allocate maximum discounts even if the usage prevents them being achievable.
(e.g. if a discount was offered at say 1% but limited to a maximum of £100p.a. some sites would calculate this correctly whilst others would just reduce the annual bill by £100 no matter what the consumption)

Also, some variations may occur at present because some sites appear to have updated their tariff details whilst others haven't.

This is why I always suggest using 2 or more of the comparison sites to check, but any variances have always been very small.

Cardew

Premier wrote: »

Yes small variations can occur.

In the past we have uncovered minor difference because of the sometimes simplistic methods some sites use to allocate discounts - they allocate maximum discounts even if the usage prevents them being achievable.
(e.g. if a discount was offered at say 1% but limited to a maximum of £100p.a. some sites would calculate this correctly whilst others would just reduce the annual bill by £100 no matter what the consumption)

Also, some variations may occur at present because some sites appear to have updated their tariff details whilst others haven't.

This is why I always suggest using 2 or more of the comparison sites to check, but any variances have always been very small.

With the new 20:20 tariff and First Utility offering 3 different tariffs(for usage at different times of the day) With the introduction of smart meters it is going to become increasingly difficult for the Comparison sites to give accurate predictions.

e.g. how can the sites tell, with the 20:20 tariff, what percentage of electricity will be used after 9pm & weekends.