Can you believe U-Switch et al?

castman

Having just received a letter from EDF telling me they wanted to triple my monthly Gas direct debit, and seeing Martin on GMTV this morning I decided to do some checking. I am currently paying EDF a total of £1320 a year for gas and electric. So, on Martin's advice I went to U-switch and simply switch and entered my details and consumption, which I over estimated to round up the figures to 6,500kwh for Elec and 900kwh for gas (this are accurate taken from actual bills for past 12 months.

Uswitch told me to change to British Gas where I would pay a mere £543.42 per year and Simply Switch suggested I go to N-Power at £576.22 - they also showed EDF as being £616.66 - wait a minute???? I'm with EDF and paying twice that!

So I then went on to EDF's own website and entered the same details and got pretty much the same £617.13

So I rang EDF and they had no explanation whatsoever for this claiming that the sum of £1200 for both would be nearer the mark.

On going back to Simply switch I notice they have three tabs on the pricing: Gas & Elec, Gas only and Elec only. I was suprised to discover that the Gas only was showing just £9.19

I have emailed Simply switch, and I guess U-switch low prices are for the same reason

But the question has to be WHY :mad:

notbritishgas

Hi castman, your annual spend seems too high for the consumption you quote. 6500 kw for elec is almost twice the average but your consumption of 900kw for gas is almost nothing. The spend of £1320 is way over the top and I would say that the comparisons you have had from uswitch etc are nearer the mark for that consumption. Are you sure your gas figure is correct?

sammyjammy

Your gas reading is probably not Kwh, you would need to calculate it, imne was over 40000 last year so yours can't be right! There will be info on how to convert it on your bill.

Sam

chmmy

I have an annual kwh similar to castman. I live in a flat with communal hot air heating, i have an electric immersion heater and just use gas for cooking. I currently pay less than £500 pa. It would be cheaper for me to get gas separately, but i get discount on dual fuel so it is cheaper (i think/hope) to be on dual fuel.

notbritishgas

Castman,as sammy said, if you have just used your gas meter readings then they are in cubic feet and need to be converted into kwh by multiplying your 900 by 2.83 then by 1.02264 then by 39.4115 and then dividing the total by 3.6 (this is the BG conversion figures)

To save you the trouble it comes to 28515kwh, which compares to my own figure of 26000.

Hope this helps.

espresso

Readings from electricty meters are in kWh but gas meters may read in cu FT or Cu M. Use this online converter to get the kWh figure for gas.

HTH

:cool:

castman

Hi Everyone,
I see the error now, and I was thrown by the EDF guy who also confirmed the figure 900, having had a meter replacement last year I assumed (wrongly) that it would now read in Kwh - makes you wonder why it doesn't really!