Trapped

sharalee99

I wonder can anyone give me any advise please?
My current electricity supplier is Scottish Hydro. At the moment I pay £131 per month for my electric :eek:. I have tried to switch, but cannot find my tarriff to compare with. My tarriff is Total heating, Total control and I believe this is only available with the Hydro. So, obviously when I go to compare, nowhere else does that tarriff to be able to compare it to. I did try to switch to Eon, ages ago, and it got so far, then they came back to me and said the same thing-that they didn't have a comparable tarriff. I feel trapped by Hydro, and don't know what to do to get away from them. Has anyone any advise for me please-and thank you!

Ch4rlieB

Why do you have to move to a comparable tariff.

Get your lats few bills (Pref a years worth) and go on a site like uswitch etc, and put in your consumption.. and go with whoever is the cheapest.

This comparable tariff is nonesense, you could be on a tariff paying twice as much as the norm.. do you really want to move to a comparable twice as much tariff.. no you want to move to a new cheaper tariff.

If your paying £131 a month for electric.. are you in an electric only house? (Ie do you have gas as well)

It may be worth investing £50 ish quid on an OWL type electric monitor that will tell you your electric usage at any point.

We did this after a rather expensive Winter on eletric last year.. Were downto combined direct debit of £35... with reall usage of roughly £45 in the winter, and £25 in the summer. Live in a 3 bed semi detached.

sharalee99

Apparantly the reason I can't swap is that I have 2 meters for this particular tarriff??
I am in an all electric house as I live on a small scottish island, there is no mains gas. Of course I want cheaper electric, but no-one want to know.

littletommytucker

Ask Hydro to switch you to a standard meter, then switch. You can count up how many KWH you use on both meters combined, and put the results into a switching site. Because you have an all electric property, if so your not really doing too bad price wise. Most average propertys with the **luxury** of having a gas supply would be paying around 100 a month for their energy, and if you have no gas facilites you would expect to be paying a lot more for heating your property and water with electricity.

adprob

if you have thtc you would need to get rewiring done to your property to get the metering changed as the whole heating system is based round the total control metering. unfortunately it is not as straight forward as say fitting a domestic economy meter.
i have thtc and am in the same boat. saying that i found that the price decrease they have had recently was a lot better than expected

MrsBartolozzi

I too am with THTC. It might be an idea for you to put your annual usage into the switching sites and see if you will save money. I have done this and I really don't see that I will save any money. (I use the washing machine/dryer during the cheap boost times and my cheap elec usage is much higher than the standard rate)
If you do move away from THTC you will presumably be on an economy 7 tarriff. This means you will lose your boosts throughout the day and the use of your cheap rate convector heaters outwith the econ 7 times. Reading the numerous threads on storage heaters it would almost certainly mean that your house would be colder, especially in the evenings as the heat stored wears off before the night-time boost.
I felt that because of this it would not be worth switching unless I was to save a good amount of money as I would have to look at another way of heating the bedrooms (no storage heaters in there, convectors instead which are cheap rate 24/7 with thtc).
Hope this gives another perspective. It is annoying to be stuck with a particular company, when I compared last Sep it was cheaper to stay with thtc.


MrsB.

adprob

MrsBartolozzi wrote: »

I (I use the washing machine/dryer during the cheap boost times and my cheap elec usage is much higher than the standard rate)


MrsB.

THTC only gives you the heating and hot water IN the tank at the cheap rate at ALL times. The electricity to use your washing machine and tumble dryer are charged at the standard rate.
That is unless you have them "wired" into the off peak meter!! :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

MrsBartolozzi

Actually with THTC you get boosts throughout the day, I forget all the times, but there is one that starts about 8am and lasts about an hour (I wait for the audible click). During this time (and others during the day) all the electric in the house is charged on the thtc meter. I do KNOW this as I have watched the meters to check as I could not believe this was the case when we bought the house (it had thtc when we moved in).

sharalee99

Thanks guys. Didn't realise it would be such a huge task to get it changed. Perhaps you are right, with the prices cuts etc, it may not be worth while persuing.

adprob

MrsBartolozzi wrote: »

Actually with THTC you get boosts throughout the day, I forget all the times, but there is one that starts about 8am and lasts about an hour (I wait for the audible click). During this time (and others during the day) all the electric in the house is charged on the thtc meter. I do KNOW this as I have watched the meters to check as I could not believe this was the case when we bought the house (it had thtc when we moved in).

Sorry to disagree but i asked hydro electric for a booklet on thtc and they sent one. it confirms that only the heating and hot water are at the cheap rate and everything else is at the normal rate.

MrsBartolozzi

adprob wrote: »

Sorry to disagree but i asked hydro electric for a booklet on thtc and they sent one. it confirms that only the heating and hot water are at the cheap rate and everything else is at the normal rate.

It's funny that cos Hydro wouldn't send me a leaflet when I asked. They said they had none left as the tarriff wasn't available to new customers any more. I had to ask around to find out how it worked and as such was keen to test out the stories instead of just assuming how it worked.
It must just be me then, but I'm not complaining, I pay £90 a month so can't be bad.
Whenever I check the meters before and after a holiday there is usage on the cheap rate meter, even with just a fridge/freezer and the sky+ box plugged in, and the number of units used would suggest that nothing else is running.

I'll have another look during the next boost and report back later. This is interesting, I'm intrigued:D.