Local Energy rates vs National Energy rates

debeast

Hi there,

Are the following statements true?

1) Uswitch and other comparison sites quote on the national gas, electric rate for comparison of the best service to move to.

2) There exists a local rate for gas, electric

3) Comparisons sites do not compare local rates

4) Therefore you may get a better deal by finding out best local rate

Are 1,2,3,4 all true? All false or a mixture of both?

/beastie

Cardew

Mixture of both.

Each tariff, for all companies, have the same price for gas across the country. i.e there are no regional variations.

For Electricity there are regional variations for every company.

Comparison sites use your postcode to determine your electricity tariff for each company.

I don't know what you mean by a 'local rate' as it is not terminology used.

You may be confusing that term with the situation that existed before the gas/electricity market was opened up to competition.
Customers in, say, Scotland could only get electricity from, say, Scottish Hydro. After the market was opened up there were restrictions placed on Scottish Hydro for those customers.

masonic

I seem to remember a thread a while back where someone was approached by a salesperson trying to get them to switch their supply with the notion of a "local rate". It sounded like some sort of scam to me then and it still does.

debeast

masonic wrote:

I seem to remember a thread a while back where someone was approached by a salesperson trying to get them to switch their supply with the notion of a "local rate". It sounded like some sort of scam to me then and it still does.

Hi there,

Thats exactly what happened to me :-)

I was pretty sure i had the cheapest rate through regularily switching . But then Notion of 'local rate' was new to me

/beastie

kat21

Ive never heard of the word local rate except in telecomms. Cardew is correct with the possibly exception of gas transporter issue (pipelines) that is why most switching websites ask for your postal code. Most companys produce a list of how much they charge for your postal code area.
kat21

debeast

So Mr Southern Electric was trying it on basically!

Moneysavers beware

thnks peeps

/beastie