Utilities Warehouse. Will it be cheaper or more expensive? slightly awkward situation

easy

A former business contact of ours, who passed a lot of business our way from his employers over the last few years, was forced to take early retirement.
We have kept in loose social contact with him.

He's become an agent (or whatever it's called) for Utilities Warehouse, and emailed us a few months ago, asking if we would be interested in changing to UW.

Anyway, I'm just worried that it'll turn out not to be competitive and rather difficult to say no to him, knowing his circumstances. But like many other people, we can't afford to pay any more than necessary for elec, gas, mobiles etc.
I've been putting him off, but his wife commented last week about how much business he put our way in the past.

So it's a bit tricky really. I really like this chap, and don't want to just ignore his efforts, will help him if we can, but feel really awkward about setting up an appointment.

I'm particularly concerned because I can only see us changing gas & elec, which I understand are pretty expensive from UW.

Our phone / internet services are all bundled in with cable TV from Virgin Media.


Also, I don't know anything about their Mobile phone services. Good, bad, indifferent?`

espresso

Simply enter your kWh figures into a comparison site e.g. here and see how far down the league table UW come.

Cardew

The Moderators only allow comments/questions about Utility Warehouse in this thread

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=387161

So I suspect it will be deleted or moved to that thread - or you can pose the same question in that thread.

easy

Cardew wrote: »

The Moderators only allow comments/questions about Utility Warehouse in this thread

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=387161

So I suspect it will be deleted or moved to that thread - or you can pose the same question in that thread.

oh, my apologies, hopefully mods will move it ?

epsilondraconis

Aye, yes something will happen to this thread. Anyway, before it does...

I've read quite a lot of the 'other thread' quoted by Cardew and the upshot seems to be thus:

1. UW are more expensive for gas and electric than the big 6 - this has been confirmed by the UW distributors.

2. It can become more competitive if you also take the broadband and phone line packages and if you also use their pre-payment card which gives you money off your UW bill when you buy goods from certain stores (i.e. Sainsuburys etc - I don't have the full list.)

My understanding of the UW prepayment card is that you don't get the same protection as you do with Visa / Mastercard, plus if UW get into financial difficulties, there is a potential risk that you may lose the money you have paid onto your prepayment card.


P.S. I am not a UW distributor nor am I a customer of UW. My interest was simply whether UW would be cheaper than my current packages and the above is simply my interpretation of what has been discussed.

epsilondraconis

Just following on from the above - I don't believe UW have any specific tie-in period and so you could say to your contact that you will take the gas and electric for 1 year (you need to confirm whether there is a tie-in period). During that year, each time before you leave to go shopping, load your UW prepayment card with money and pay for the shopping with the UW card. i.e. This ensures you don't keep a lot of money on it just in case it is lost somehow. Hopefully the use of the prepayment card will bring your gas and electric bill closer than you are currently paying.

After 1 year, you can switch away feeling that morally you have helped him in return.

easy

thanks epsilondraconis, you confirm my feelings about this.

Thing is, this guy has told me that it's a great company, their share price is high, blah-di-blah.

But I am more concerned about the price I pay for my supplies, than where the supplier appears in the FT index.

epsilondraconis

No problem - hopefully I've accurately summed up UW and that no one will shout at me too much. There is a lot fo contention on the other thread regarding UW.

Had the gas and electricity prices been lower and the prepayment card safer, then I would have switched myself.

1carminestocky

If you are just taking gas and electric and have no use of the cashback card and not too bothered about CS etc, there are defrinitely cheaper deals out there. For me, UW is the cheapest deal no question (as demonstrated over God knows how many pages in the dedicated thread but i wouldn't advise you to read it if you are of a nervous disposition, lol). But that's because I would be combining the 4 services (gas/electric/phone/BB/calls). The price that comes to for me is very difficult to beat even ignoring the cashback card discount. Add that in (for me it would be upwards of £300 discount per year) and, for me, it's impossible to get near anywhere else, even accepting online billing with long tie-in periods etc etc. But we shop regularly at Sainsburys, of course. A supermarket that many serious moneysavers are defecting to, if you check out the Shopping Section, lol.

Horses for courses. And, like you say, a difficult situation.

NigeWick

epsilondraconis wrote: »

A1. UW are more expensive for gas and electric than the big 6 - this has been confirmed by the UW distributors.

Not quite right. About 15% of offerings are dearer than Utility Warehouse and if you look at the numbers who pay those prices, they are the majority of the country. Those same companies also offer cheaper utilities but rely on people not bothering to switch to keep their profits up.

Utility Warehouse can work out good value for money for a lot of people. As has been said, to get the most benefit, one should shop regularly at Sainsbury's and use the cashback card to best effect. You really do need to check your own figures to be sure that you are getting the best deal for your personal circumstances.

I am an Independent Distributor with Utility Warehouse and any opinions expressed here are my own and may not be shared by the company.

Cardew

NigeWick wrote: »

Not quite right. About 15% of offerings are dearer than Utility Warehouse and if you look at the numbers who pay those prices, they are the majority of the country. Those same companies also offer cheaper utilities but rely on people not bothering to switch to keep their profits up.

I am an Independent Distributor with Utility Warehouse and any opinions expressed here are my own and may not be shared by the company.

Here we go again.

You are saying if I understand you correctly that 85% of tariffs are cheaper than UW and 15% are more expensive??

So as you say the majority of people are using that 15% of 'more expensive' tariffs, presumably you mean standard tariffs like BG Standard?

If that is so, you convieniently forget to mention that in making that comparison you ignore any discounts given for payment by Direct Debit and Dual fuel by BG and other companies and also ignore the monthly UW membership fee.

In my area an average consumer who is silly enough to be on BG's most expensive standard tariff and using 20,500kWh/3,300kWh gas/electric would still pay between 5% and 16% more with UW. - thus being even sillier!

If you want to pay quarterly, then UW are even more expensive.

So keeping it to gas and electricity prices, UW are without question just about the most expensive in UK.