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Cardew

philadam wrote: »

Accurate information doesn't always help either. Just as an example of what happened to my elderly mother recently. She was with Eon on Staywarm tariff and paying £110 per month for her gas and electricity. Every year Eon sent her details of her past year's usage charge based on meter readings together with a note of her new monthly direct debit amount for the forthcoming year. Using this information I used one of the price comparison websites to see if she could get a better deal. Scottish Power came up as the best one at £86 per month and she duly switched to them in January with a monthly direct debit set at £86.

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The comparison websites don't come up with a DD payment figure.

If you enter the annual kWh figure into any of the websites they will come up with a predicted annual bill that takes into account all unit prices, discounts etc gas = £xxx; electricity = £yyy

The electricity company(in this case SP) use this figure to set the level of the monthly DD.

Presumably the 'infallible computer' at SP worked out that, based on her consumption, £86 was insufficient and increased it to £134. I suspect like most companies this decision is not reviewed by a real live human.

It is also possible that EON had sent your mother consumption figures based on estimated meter readings, which could be way out.

So if you have a gripe, it should be directed at SP(or EON) and not the comparison website.

philadam

Cardew, I don't have a "gripe" with the price comparison sites. Not sure where I intimated that. I am just giving an example of where it can still go wrong even if you provide the annual usage figures. Sure it is Scottish Power that have calculated the first review immediately after a high usage quarter which over inflates the figures. Nothing to do with the price comparison site, but I wanted to highlight it as a warning to others that this could happen.

Just to clarify, the annual usage figures provided by Eon are accurate from their own meter readings. They have to do this to make sure you are in the correct charging band for the next year.

Plushchris

philadam wrote: »

Cardew, I don't have a "gripe" with the price comparison sites. Not sure where I intimated that.

It may have been when you said that SP came at the top of the list with a DD of £86, which comparison site were you using that quoted you that?

philadam

Plushchris wrote: »

It may have been when you said that SP came at the top of the list with a DD of £86, which comparison site were you using that quoted you that?

It was UK Power because it compared Eon Staywarm tariff to other providers and many don't. I was very pleased with the service I received from them and I posted this to the Gas and Electricity sticky thread in February:

philadam wrote: »

I've recently used UK Power to switch my elderly mother's Staywarm provider to Scottish Power, saving her about £280 a year. I was very impressed with UK Power's efficiency in keeping her informed about the switch. The process took about six weeks. They sent her a £20 switching cheque promptly for linking through Martin's website once her new account with Scottish Power had been set up.