Scottish Power Fixed Price - 28 February 2011

samizdat

martyp wrote: »

Hi all,
I'm also on this plan and have been doing comparative calculations myself using the rates for all the plans offered through the online service and also the Online Energy Saver 12 plan.
In my particular case where I used 10310 kwh of gas and 3489 kwh of electric I calculated a saving of approx £26 with Online Energy Saver 12 but with all other capped/fixed plans it'll cost around £100 more at least.

Seems to be a lot of love around for Scottish Power Online Energy Saver 12. However, I have checked the unit prices for the London region, and they are not very tempting, or even that competitive.
10.859p for electricity
3.065p for gas

Scottish Power Fixed Price Energy Online (February 2011) has:
9.276p for electricity
2.641p for gas

Atlantic Fixed Price 3 is:
10.448p for electricity
2.772p for gas

EdF Online S@ver v8 is even cheaper for electricity, but a bit more for gas - however, I expect EdF will be raising their prices soon.

All these prices are inclusive of VAT at 5%.

Obviously, I appreciate that prices differ according to what part of the country you are in.

Premier_2

Yes the competitiveness of the tariff will vary with area and consumption.

I understand why electricity prices vary by area, but don't understand why gas prices do. e.g. in London they are as you say 3.065p per kWh for tier 2, yet in East Midlands it's only 2.270p per kWh.

Also it's not fair to compare this variable tariff with an old fixed rate tariff that is not available to switch to, and will end next month anyway.

But better deals may be available and that is why anyone considering switching should first consult a comparison site
There is no one supplier/tariff that is cheapest for all ... else we'd all be on it.

ANGLICANPAT

People are talking about being put onto an expensive bog basic standard rate by SP at the end of the Feb 11 fix, so theyre trying to move to something else 6 weeks before the fix ends, to avoid that scenario. Surely at the end of the SP Feb 11 fix, mightnt there be other SP reasonably competitive online non bog basic deals you could opt into that arent fixed, to give you a chance to wait and look around after the Winter, to see what goodies are available to swap into perhaps with another firm?
Does anyone have a link by the way to the terms and conditions for this dual fuel Feb 2011 fix please, I cant find them online.

ANGLICANPAT

Wanting to look at the terms and conditons, because in the back of my mind , theres something nagging, about whether there were various discounts within this deal, which are paid at the end of the term, and lost if you dont see it through to the end.

jack_spratt_2

Hope this is what you are looking for ! I am sure there was no discounts on the termination of the deal but I believe a exit fee was introduced for customers in the second batch of people who changed to this tariff but not sure .


http://www.scottishpower.co.uk/pdf/HistoricFixedPriceEnergy2011.pdf

Cash back of £180 was the incentive for my change before completion because I had no cancellation fee on mine and this would go some way to meet the increased cost for the next 12 months

Taken from the T+C

3. Fixed Price Energy customers will default to ScottishPower’s
standard monthly Direct Debit prices at the end of the
Offer.

ANGLICANPAT

Thanks very much for that Jack Spratt, its exactly what I was looking for .Seems theres no problem with discounts etc but going through the small print to make sure you dont fall foul of their rules is a right headache!

looking_to_save_money

i am with SP fixed rate ends feb 2011 if i stop with them on the online enery saver 12 will they throw in a energy monitor for free??????

martyp

looking_to_save_money wrote: »

i am with SP fixed rate ends feb 2011 if i stop with them on the online enery saver 12 will they throw in a energy monitor for free??????

You could try! I didn't get offered one when I switched and forgot to ask too but then again I do already have one I picked up cheap from a car boot sale anyway so didn't mention it at the time. I was more worried at the time about not getting the deal which seemed so good at the time as I read about it being difficult to switch as an existing customer but there was no hassle at all for me, she did it in seconds.
It did mess up the online management though for submitting meter readings for a few days but that was quickly sorted out.
Fingers crossed now for no scary price hikes, I opted for the special offer boiler cover from Homeserve too for £70 or so rather than the £12 a month from SP...

elektra

received an email from SP confirming that we will be automatically be switched to standard direct debit prices or we can choose


Capped Price Energy September 2012 Offer
- Capped prices for 18 months2
-
Reduced prices if our standard Direct Debit rates drop
- Protection from future price increases during Offer period
-
No cancellation fee

have until 31st March to take up this offer.

at least they have given 4 weeks notice. I've been quite happy with SP - no problems.

I will start doing the comparisons this weekend.

martyp

Hi elektra,
I did all the comparisons for my area (14) and from loads of sites it always showed the Online Energy Saver 12 as being the only plan cheaper that the Fixed price Feb 2011 offer. Of course it would be up to you though if you want to fix again to be on the safe side and your region prices may be cheaper with other suppliers. I obtained my usage from the last year from my latest online bill (the full pdf version) and did calculations in Excel using the unit rates and it came out cheaper still. I don't trust the energy saving comparison sites as I notice the deals are often using the wrong figures (found it hard to work out what this plan was named as on some sites) and can result in really misleading results. I've noticed that the different comparison sites seem to list the SP plans with different names so it might suggest you could save about £200 but in my case doing the bare calculations based on the information available on the pdfs on the SP website I would only save about £26 or so switching to OES 12.