Plea for advice!

Vintagebelle_2

Hi All,
I'm sure you've read posts like this a lot recently but I'm in desperate need of some help. I'm with british Gas for Gas and NPower for electric, both standard tariffs and like everyone else I've been reading about how I should be switching/fixing my utilities to save cash. I've done lots of price comparisons but they all seem to cost more than what we currently pay and yet claim to be saving us up about 150£ a year - I can't figure out for the life of me what if any would be better. can any of you offer any advice?

House is a two bed mid terraced in B30 (birmingham)

Gas Supplier: British Gas
Tarriff: Standard
Usage: Approx 9000kwh per year

Elec Supplier: Npower
Tarriff: Standard
Usage: Approx 1400kwh per year
Meter: Economy seven - bills show we're using about 1250kwh night rate and 130kwh day. We don't have night storage heaters and never use our appliances overnight so I don't really understand how they've come to that conclusion.

We currently pay quartlerly on receipt of bill but quite happy to start online billing and direct debit.

Does anyone have any nuggets of advice they can give about what we should do as I'm currently pulling my hair out trying to figure out whether we would save anything by switching/fixing!!!!!!!!

Many thanks
Vintagebelle xxx

evilmonkey69

The good news is that you can save, as your supplies suggest you have never switched before. Those with the incumbent suppliers paying by quarterly bill (as a general rule) can save the most by switching usually DD and online billing gives the best tariff options.

EON Save Online 8 would save around £159 per annum based on the information given/ Switching using a cashback website (quidco/topcashback) can offer an additional bonus, even as much as £130 which i got about 18 months ago for switching to scot power. At least £30 (dual fuel) can be achieved using the usual online services (see Martin's switching supplier section about this).

You could try EON fixed price 5, saving £99 per annum and fixed until 1 july 2013.

Or try Scottish Power fixed price January 2015 saving £58 per annum (this excludes £40 cashback currently on offer at ukpower.co.uk).

My concern is that your electricity meter reads may be tranposed. Read your electricity meter a few hours apart during the daytime and whichever advances is your day read (normal) and the other is night. Check this against your last reads on the most recent bill to see if the readings are the wrong way round, which would unfortunately mean your being under-charged.

macman

Something very wrong about your overall leccy consumption-about a third of what would be average for a property with gas CGH and DHW-around 4,000kWh.
I agree with evilmonkey, strong chance that your E7 readings are transposed if you are supposedly using 91% on cheap rate-that would be difficult even using storage heaters and E7 hot water! I don't even understand why you are on E7-it rarely makes sense if you have gas CH, with your rates transposed it would be far more expensive, as 90% of your consumption will be billed at premium rate.
Fixes are not meant to be cheaper, you pay a premium now to insure against future price rises. However, if you are going to stay on variable, then get off standard rate-that's the most expensive variable option. All the best variables require payment by monthly DD.