Equipower and equigas

bengal-stripe

"Read all about it!!!!!!"
http://www.ebico.co.uk/

oldwiring

computerwoman wrote:

:j Who are ebico and how cheap are they, I've never heard of them, but I'm with powergen and am getting charged alsorts of different prices on the same bill so want to go I don't owe them anything at the mo, as I'm in credit by £1.92p so can go away from them but wondered who this company are, T

Just put Ebico, Equigas, Equipower in to MSE search and watch the threads come up. You could make something very pretty from them:D

giggs11

i'm going to change to them too after receiving the price increase info from npower as i can save £100 a year with them!!!

has anyone had any problems with npower letting them switch to ebico as i've read some threads saying npower tried blocking them from moving :eek:

Ken68

NPower can probably delay the transfer or even stop it until you have settled the final bill, but they can't just block it.
My guess is that EBICO is taking a lot of the business, altho a price increase is due , probably in September, may up to 25%.
Competition works wonders.

jennifernil

How do you find out about impending increases?

Xbigman

Ebico have missed the last two rounds of price increases as well as the fact they promised to hold prices until september this year. Some others have raised prices 40% in the last year.

Until this year Ebico were mainly of use to low users but their prices have become more competitive as time passes. Their gas price has always been relatively better than their electric.
Regards



X

Ken68

jennifernil wrote:

How do you find out about impending increases?

This site is useful, Jennifer........http://www.ukpower.co.uk/price%2Bupdates.asp

Heinz

I changed to Equigas back in May and, amazingly, the switch took place 3 days BEFORE I applied!

I queried that and their explanation was that the switch was an internal accounting process and they just did it to coincide with the last meter reading I'd sent in (I send in one a month). I may be wrong but, reading between the lines of that, I gathered that my previous supplier, Atlantic, re-sold Southern Electric's gas and Ebico (Equigas) do too.

Anyway, although the comparison sites are useful to find out each supplier's unit price, I am suspicious about their recommendations because, obviously, they need to earn commission for getting people to switch.

In fact, I think I justified that suspicion last week when, after receiving another 'your electricity price went up a week ago' letter from British Gas, I decided to investigate switching my electricity supplier too.

This is how I worked out which was best for me:

Knowing my last year's total consumption (6155kWh), I used the Energyhelpline Cashback* comparison site recommended in Martin's article (yes, I admit it, hoping to get the £12.50 cashback).

That showed me the usual range of suppliers but all would allegedly be MORE EXPENSIVE than my existing supplier, BG.

Noting that the 'winner' (Equipower) had a note 'Unfortunately, you are unable to switch to EQUIPOWER using energyhelpline.com. This supplier does not currently support our service for this tariff' (and so the £12.50 cashback was out of the window), I decided to ignore the 'You will save' column (all entries showed negative amounts anyway) and use the data supplied to make my own comparision.

None of the suppliers appear to charge a Standing Charge any more so that made comparison easier.

Checking Equipower's cost per kWh, I calculated the annual cost of using 6155kWh against what BG would charge me from 1/7/06:

BG - 900kWH @ 13.188p (£118.69) + 5255kWh @ 7.732p (£406.32) = £525.01

Equipower - 6155kWH @ 7.4p = £455.47

(Actually, I checked the price per kWh of all the suggested suppliers but none was cheaper than Equipower anyway so it wasn't worth putting more rows in the Excel spreadsheet).

debs626

It stands to reason. The company are a Not For Profit Organisation. They wouldnt be paying any of the online switching companys any commission as they have no funding for marketing. No share holders to keep happy and no pushy sales ppl to pay. I can imagine 50% of the population switching to this company (EBICo Ltd) if they knew about it.

Bye bye Powergen!

Snippet taken from there site

23/04/2004: "In Martin Lewis' Money Saving Expert item on Radio 2 last week, he pointed out that EQUIGAS and EQUIPOWER are the cheapest tariffs for pre-payment meter customers. This is true. Unfortunately, some listeners got the impression that cashback was available for those who switched to us. This is not true. We think that offering the fairest prices for all for electricity and gas is sufficiently attractive on its own. But many thanks to Martin for bring our 'fair trade' tariffs to the attention of Radio 2 listeners."

computerwoman

:j I've noticed it says pre-payment meters can you still sign up to them if your not on pre-payment meters. thanks in advance T