Comparison Website savings not making sense

Amossis

Good Evening All

I am presently with NPower on their standard tarif. I am looking to cut down on my bills, just like everyone else, but when i use the comparison sites, they don't quite make sense.

I have used the energyhelpline website to compare my usage of both electricity and gas.

What I am struggling to understand are the results. They indicated that my biggest saving was to change my Npower standard tarif to an NPower online tarif.

However after looking at the cost per unit for both eleictricity and gas, I found that they worked out cheaper over the year than the Npower tarif.

I then looked at the gas and electricity quotes seperately and according the the website, the Npower option was still the cheapest. However again when I calculated the cost representative of my annual usage, the other providers were cheaper.

I don't understand how if something is clearly cheaper per unit(and then multiplying the usage by cost per unit), that something that is more expensive, can be recommended as the best saving for me.

If am being daft, please humour me as it just doesn't make sense to me.

Any tips or help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

SwanJon

Discounts applied on to of the p/kWh?

notbritishgas

Did you take into account the £105 discount applied after 12 months DD payments on dual fuel.
The comparison sites do use that when working out the cheapest supplier.

Premier_2

Amossis wrote: »

...I have used the energyhelpline website to compare my usage of both electricity and gas....

However after looking at the cost per unit for both eleictricity and gas, I found that they worked out cheaper over the year than the Npower tarif. ...

If you click on the tariff, a pop-up appears giving full details of the tariff (not just the unit prices) that is used to calculate the annual cost.

freddi_2

I am on E.on FixOnline8 and I just put my usage into the Moneyextra site and I got back 72 results with 0 cheaper than my present supplier. And the present cost was within 2p of my spreadsheet calculation, there must be a rounding error somewhere.

4090 electricity and 18000 gas for £909.87 a year. I get £909.89. That includes a 24.4% discount which is £293.67. Without any discounts using the tariff charges only my cost would be £1203.56.

So the price of gas and electricity must be going up again, I wonder how much more I will have to pay after July 2011

In fact on all the comparison sites they all give the same results for me so if your results are not as expected you might be doing something wrong.

Plushchris

I cannot think of a situation where and suppliers standard tariff would be cheaper than the online tariff.

Must be something to do with the discounts, or comparing the unit rates on a bill (Ex. VAT) to the unit rates on the comparison site (including VAT)

I've said it before and I'll say it again..

Comparing prices on unit rates alone is pretty much pointless and is unlikely to get you onto the cheapest deal for you (if only it was that simple)