Utility Warehouse (Telecom Plus) Discussion

HappyMJ

MillicentBystander wrote: »

Try it again with High User for gas and Medium User for electric (the correct tariffs). The correct figure is £1264 for existing UW customers and £1282 for new customers. Massive difference. Switching sites eh?

Sorry you mentioned low users so I used the low user dual fuel tariff.

I agree the switching sites don't allow you to mix and match the deals and only have one admin fee so when you look at the gas and electricity separately to find the correct tariff then the £18 is added to each one therefore making it look more expensive.

You could try speaking with UW to release a better tariff that takes all usage levels into account on one tariff rather than 3. It's easily done.

Cardew

Any idea why energyhelpline add the £18/yr club fee in twice? Certainly on low
user comparisons this makes a massive difference to the results...

MillicentBystander wrote: »

For every huge user like you there must also be very low users for the 'average' consumption figures to arrive at the figures they do.


Gas 6510
Electric 1011

(these are actual figures of a friend of my late father btw).

Energyhelpine figure = £505

Correct figure = £469 (existing customer), £487 (new customer). Not to mention the chance of a 10% refund after 12 months for those taking at least 4 qualifying services so potentially £439 for the new customer. And accurate monthly billing as standard. See how this affects the league table and report back.

Using your figures(for the Midlands) energyhelpline show UW low user as £502 and in 6th position.

Gas Electricity
Standing charge 0.00
p per day (£0.00 per year)
0.00 p per day (£0.00
per year) Unit charge
(pence per kWh) 5.030 p
15.443 p

Gas 6510kWh x 5.030 = £327.45
Elect 1011 x 15.443p = £156.13

Total £483.58

So adding just one membership fee of £18 = £501.58

For what district was your figure of £505 obtained?

I had assumed it was Yorkshire? Using a Leeds postcode(LS2 8TD) energyhelpline comes up with a figure of £493. with UW in 9th place.

6510*4.898p + 1011*15.411p = £474.66

So adding just one £18 = £492.66

So unless I have missed something, for Yorkshire and the Midlands, only the one membership fee of £18 was added.

Where were the the two membership fees of £18 in your example?

MillicentBystander

Sorry, Cardew, I wasn't ignoring your post, got called away for the last few days.

The figures I was quoting were actually based on Midlands area (I have a Wolverhampton post code I use). The actual correct tariff for that consumption is Standard Gas and Low Electric (UWs own calculation page does this automatically, unlike the comparison sites), which on energyhelpline comes out at £505.

Here's the proper calculation though

Gas (standard):

6510 x 4.528 p = £294.77 + £18.27 standing charge = £313.04

Electric (Low):

1011 x 15.411 = £156.13

£156.13 + £313.04 + £18 = £487.17. Energyhelpline have the figure as £505! Difference?

If you check on the seperate figures given on energyhelpline you will see:

Gas = £331 (this is the actual figure plus the £18 club fee)

Electric = £174 (this is the actual figure plus the £18 club fee).

Now add these figures together

£331 + £174 = £505! Club fee added in twice.

The correct figure of £487 leaves UW in 2nd place in the table (behind a company even you, I'm sure, would struggle to recommend over UW! :eek:). In fact UW are actually cheaper than the not for profit Ebico.

But even leaving aside the potential for a 10% refund on the first 12 months expenditure, there is also this which you failed to mention (it applies to both Yorkshire and Midlands regions):

Electricity customers paying by monthly direct debit will receive an annual rebate of £21 subject to a minimum annual spend of £105 (not included in the savings figure).

This would reduce the yearly figure to £466 and place UW comfortably in first place in the table. In fact, customers could even upgrade to a monthly paper bill (and totally accurate monthly billing if they wish) and STILL be the cheapest! Hence my assertion that for low users UW can be unbeatable....and energyhelpline can't always be trusted when it comes to UW tariffs. And as for low users who do their grocery shopping at Sainsburys, well....:D

Cardew

Seems strange that someone who uses only 40% of the UK average gas consumption isn't classed as a low user by UW. However we have discussed confusion marketing before!!

Whilst I agree that energyhelpline are using low user gas and electricity in their dual fuel comparison, in anorak mode there are a couple of minor points.

Firstly on my PC energyhelpline shows the total for UW Dual fuel low user as £502 not the £505 you state.(Standard user is shown as £504)

So I do not believe that energyhelpline are adding in the £18 membership fee twice. I think they derive their figure of £502 by simply using low user gas instead of high user gas. As from my post above:

Gas 6510kWh x 5.030 = £327.45
Elect 1011 x 15.443p = £156.13

Total
£483.58

So adding just one membership fee of £18
= £501.58

In fact you can verify that energyhelpline don't use two £18 membership fees, by entering a high user consumption. As an example I used 20,000kWh gas and 10,000kWh electricity. UW high user is shown as £2,304

Using the kWh prices + standing charges, the cost is £2,286 which plus one £18 fee is £2304. Incidentally that is £326 pa(16.5%) more than the cheapest tariff.

Going back to your low user, for gas only they show UW standard user as £331 as you state.
Incidentally Ebico are £2 cheaper at £329.

For electricity only they show UW as £174 and NPower at £149 - albeit that includes having to jump through hoops to get the discounts after 12 months.

So the cheapest would be Ebico/Npower at £478.

MillicentBystander

Nice try but no cigar . Read my post again, carefully and specifically the £505 figure and how they get to it, and get back to me. Like energyhelpline you don't seem capable of understanding that you can have Gas at standard tariff and Electric at low tariff??

PS I'll be out for an hour or 2 gathering some more straw for you to clutch at.

PPS Please tell me the cheapest price available for Gas 6510 and Electric 1011 with UW in the Midlands.

PPPs Please tell me how much discount you would lose on the npower electric quote and how much discount you would lose out on the UW electric quote if you left before the 12 months period stipulated. Specifically, you are including the almost £48 annual discount on the npower electric but excluding the £21 annual discount on the UW electric. Interesting...any reason why? The UW dual fuel figure comes to £467 (in other words £11 cheaper than ANY other company or even combination of companies can do it for) with this included, I'm suspecting herein lies the reason for this 'oversight' .

MillicentBystander

I haven't had much time to test this theory but here goes - energyhelpline seem to add in the club fee twice when you pick differing UW tariffs in the same quote, (edit: as HappyMJ asserted earlier ). For instance, in my £505 quote that is arrived at by choosing the correct (cheapest) tariff as Gas standard and Electric low (this is done automatically if you try UWs own calculator on their site so there's absolutely no confusion marketing on their part). The correct amount here is £487 (£466 including the electric annual discount). It's not exactly rocket science to see the club fee has been added in twice here by energyhelpline, is it? Certainly for users with low consumption than typical it makes a huge difference to the results.

Cardew

I suggest you are the one that needs to re-read my last post.

I am aware how you have reached a figure of £505 i.e. £331 + £174 + 2 x £18) by getting the figure for gas, and then electricity, separately from energyhelpline.

However if you enter that consumption as dual fuel into Energyhelpline you get £502(it is actually £501.58) - not £505.

They get to that figure, as I conceded, by using the low user gas tariff, instead of standard user.

Their algorithm, like every other comparison website, doesn't 'mix and match' tariffs when you select dual fuel and low/standard/high UW tariffs are treated as separate tariffs.

If it did 'mix and match' tariffs the cheapest for UW would be, as you state, £487.17 - for standard gas and low electricity.

However if they did mix and match tariffs the cheapest would be £478 - £329 Ebico and £149 Npower.(I am not recommending Npower!!)

The point of my reply was to concede that, for 6,510kWh, standard user gas from UW is cheaper than their low user. However they do not add in the £18 membership fee twice as you claim.

I then gave an illustration of a high user where using energyhelpline only include one £18 membership fee.

Will you concede you were mistaken on that point?

MillicentBystander

Does this link work?

http://www.energyhelpline.com/ege16_energyhelpline/fri/Domesticenergy/Domestic/Results?id=ab2d89d2-1f0a-4ac9-89df-a13f00cd6097


PS And why are you happy to include the £48 annual electric discount from npower but seem to be completely ignoring this as stated CLEARLY regarding UWs electric on the tariff details in the enrgyhelpline quote?

(UW) Electricity customers paying by monthly direct debit will receive an annual rebate of £21 subject to a minimum annual spend of £105 (not included in the savings figure).

Be biased by all means (I expect it) but don't make it so glaringly obvious...

PS Perish the thought but you are a UW rep and I come to you with my consumption figures of 6510 gas 1011 electric in the Midlands area and ask you for a quote - the UW page is down so you use energyhelpline instead. How much would you quote me?

Cardew

I would hardly 'be happy' at giving any credit to Npower! Ditto UW!!

I am merely stating that if they 'mixed and matched tariffs' that would be the combination that energyhelpline would produce as cheapest.

Any idea why energyhelpline add the £18/yr club fee in twice? Certainly on
low user comparisons this makes a massive difference to the results...

They don't include it twice!

MillicentBystander

Why are you pretending the £21 UW discount doesn't exist? is it because it b***ers up your claims? And please give me the cheapest UW quote for Gas 6510/Electric 1011 in the Midlands area, please. Is it £505/£504/£502/£487/£466? Delete as applicable...

PS What is the cheapest UW quote you can get me on energyhelpline?