Airtricity and only one year of cheap electricity?

martin57

Hi folks,

I signed up to Airtricity last September 2010 and its supposed to be 14% cheaper than NIE, well its actually 10% cheaper when you take into consideration that NIE will give you 4% for paying by direct debit.

I have just found out that Airtricity in fact will only give you this 14% for one year only (in my case a saving of 10%) but just seen their latest ads where it says in year 2 the saving is just 8% over NIE (which is really only 4% when taking into consideration NIE's direct debit discount of 4%)

I know that 4% is still a saving on NIE and my question is has anyone on here been talking to Airtricity and been able to negotiate a better deal than the 8% they offer after year one?

Thanks for any replies.
Martin57

maveli

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H--tdhf1DPg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=733V399DGQU&NR=1

Sorry. Nothing useful to say.

Golden_Anemone

To be fair to them martin57, I remember Airtricity saying straight up last summer when I switched that the 14% discount was a one year only offer but that they guaranteed to be cheaper than NIE after that so I'm happy that I got what I signed up for.

And I honestly don't see how anyone could negotiate a better rate given that their rate is still cheaper than the only competitor. It's not like the customer can go elsewhere for better value which would be the normal negotiating tool.

bigsy

Make sure you know the terms of the contract you signed up to at the time. I signed up in October 2010 via a work promotion to save 'up to 16%' over NIE Energy for one year until 30/9/11. After that it reverts to 'up to 6% discounted SmartSaver Standard rates'. At that stage I'll review what they're offering and jump back to NIE Energy if they're cheaper. At least I think I can walk away with 7 days notice.

Airtricity are developing a confusing array of prices and their best deals now involve fixing into a 2 year contract - see http://www.airtricity.com/uk/home/products/current-offers/electricity/
For a company that has only been supplying domestic customers in NI for a relatively short period, they have already built up a good back catalogue of expired offers which can make checking historic rates out a bit confusing, http://www.airtricity.com/uk/home/products/tariffs-a-z/

2gorgeousgirls

We had airtricity rep calling round the doors who explained they could save us 14% on our electricity. He spoke to husband who said he couldn't sign up until he spoke to me as I look after that sort of thing - wise man!

Anyway, guy said he would call back. In the meantime I looked on their website. We are on keypad powershift and to change to airtricity we have to revert back to the standard electricity tariff with NIE therefore the saving is 14% on the standard tariff.

As we are already saving that by using powershift, changing would mean minimal/no savings for us.

If you are on a standard tariff then it may be worth doing but if you are on powershift just be careful and remember when you are looking at savings you have to look at the standard tariff.

The rep did return and when I mentioned the powershift to him, he agreed that it would not be worthwhile changing at present. He did say that they have plans to allow powershift customers to change directly in the future without reverting to standard tariff.