Time To Switch

bunking_off

alared wrote:

The result was that Ebico beat Pgen by £20 a year (hardly worth the trouble to change).

£20 plus whatever kickback the comparison site give you, to fill out on-line forms that consist little more than your name/address/MPR/bank details? I'll take £30-40 for 10 mins work, thanks very much.

Two things continue to wind me up about the whole process, though

- why don't any of the comparison sites take account of surcharges for private gas suppliers? Pretty much every new build is impacted by this.

- why does the process take so long? When you move your phone service from one supplier to another, changes are actually made so your calls route via a different network. When you change gas or electricity provider, it's a billing exercise...it isn't as though someone has to go and change the network so you get British Gas particles rather than NPower. This being the case, why is it that a change of telephone provider can be done in under a week, but from my experience gas/electricity changes drag on for months? If they could get that sorted properly, then alared's issues should disappear because you could change supplier in line with the rates (much like I use my Orchid dialler to change phone supplier twice a day)....on second thoughts, I've probably just answered my own question...

Cardew

bunking_off wrote:

.it isn't as though someone has to go and change the network so you get British Gas particles rather than NPower.

I am pretty certain that my gas from BG is a much superior product to the nasty stuff from NPower; in the same way as BG's electricity is a much higher voltage, and probably better power factor, than from these upstart French and German owned companies.

Just a serious point, how would the comparison sites know if your gas was coming from a private supply company

bunking_off

Cardew wrote:

Just a serious point, how would the comparison sites know if your gas was coming from a private supply company

As I understand it you can tell from the MPR number.

Alternatively, if that's too complicated a check box "Private supply?" would do the job. From exchanges on this board in the past, the surcharge levied by the supply companies tends to be the same regardless of who the private supplier is (ie NPower charge the same regardless of who the supplier is, not NPower charge the same as Powergen as British Gas etc).

Tightwad2_2

I think most of these, "Switch your supplier NOW" sites are a waste of time.
Almost all of them rate Atlantic as the best, (cheapest) supplier for dual fuel tarrifs. But, if you name Atlantic as your supplier, enter your post code and your annual gas and electricity costs, you are presented with EBICO.

The percentage savings they quote are rubbish, the main factor in all cases is the cost per killowatt hour of the energy you are buying. I found Ebico to be the lowest for gas, 1.94p/ KWh and electricity 8.62p/KWh.
If Tesco charges £1.20 per pint for Birds Custard, and Asda charge £1.52 per pint for Birds custard both delivered free to your home, who would you buy your Birds custard from?
Conversely, if supplier A charges 1.94p per unit and supplier B charges 2.5p per unit, you do the maths.
Oh, and that 1.94p includes the dreaded VAT and you pay no more. Not
21.5p for the first 758KWh and then 2.5p + VAT thereafter per unit.

I realise they will probably have to increase their rates in the near future, but if we were all to back them then they may be able to make a difference to the market. Have a look, costs you nowt and you might be suprised.

Tightwad2_2

Originally Posted by alared
The result was that Ebico beat Pgen by £20 a year (hardly worth the trouble to change).

But, if we all took the trouble to change........ we make make a big difference..

Notice that Ebico is non profit making, so they plough money back to help lower the cost to their customers.

One ant can lift ten times it's own weight, imagine what 30 million of the !!!!!!s could do..

Wig

If your aim is to get a share of part of the cash paid to the comparison services, then fine but if you exclude the suppliers which don't pay bonus to the switch services from your results then you are making a big mistake in my opinion.

I'm only saying this because Martin mentions this in relation to uswitch

"Important. If you're using the Uswitch comparison, ensure during the process that you tick the 'include social tariffs' option, otherwise you'll find some competitive tariffs are excluded."

But uswitch has now added another barrier to people wanting to search all tariffs, they have added the check box.

Do you want to search the suppliers that we can help you change to? YES NO and it is defaulted to YES!

Energywatch needs to sort these crooks out, people are not being told what the cheapest suppliers are on most of the comparison sites! Including Which? of all companies you'd expect Which? (the consumers champion) to be on the side of consumers and provide people with unbiased information!

PS I have found ukpower.co.uk to be a good comparison service including all tariffs/suppliers as a standard search.

Wig

GVANAS wrote:

Hi sorry to pour cold bubbles on the free champagne offer if you switch with Uswitch - please find below copy from their terms and conditions and it clearly states you have to have switched before the 12th July regardless of signing up through the Uswitch/Champagne link.
"To qualify for this offer you must confirm a switch to a new* gas and/ or electricity supplier using the uSwitch.com comparison and switching service, on the following link only, before 11.00 p.m. on the 12th of July 2006."
Mind you still saved over £80 by switching :T - so I'm still thankful to Uswitch - PS they make it really easy :j - excellent site!
Happy saving
Graham

They (USWITCH) also make it "really easy" for you to be misinformed as to who the cheapest supplier actually is. Not an excellent site IMO! Go to ukpower and do a search there and to be sure also do a search for individual gas and elec supply (not dual fuel).

Paul_J

Ok. I tried a search on ukpower.co.uk and its coming back with exactly the same results as the other 2 sites that are getting slated here (though uswitch did not include EBIco in their comparisons).

Also, ukpower.co.uk along with energyhelpline.com give EbiCo a very low customer service rating.
However, I do believe that its a good thing that some people on here are saying to tread carefully when using these comparison sites and its good to make people aware about their financial kickbacks.

So, I went directly to EBIco's website and used their figures to calculate my costs. I really liked their simple and open pricing. EBIco worked out to £1170. But on energyhelpline.com, their quoted figure was £945. Hmmm.

I also went directly to Atlantics website who openly display their unit costs and it worked out the same as the comparison sites figures, £1025.
So after this further research, my best bet still seems to be Atlantic.

BTW, the cost of Powergens 2010 fixed deal was very high. It surprised me. But if costs keep rising the way they have been, you never know, it may work out cheaper................ eventually.

melpomene

I'm dithering about which comparison site to use now, also whether to wait til the round of prices increases concludes as we seem to be waiting for just one!

I'm with Powergen for both gas & electricity & find them steep, but pay quarterly & don't like losing that control, ie not knowing how much I'd be in debt or credit at any given time. I also get TEsco Clubcard points with Powergen! Only 1% i know.

Mel

espresso

melpomene wrote:

I'm dithering about which comparison site to use now, also whether to wait til the round of prices increases concludes as we seem to be waiting for just one!

Which one is that then?

See here for latest price updates.

You won't save any money by dithering!

HTH

:wave: