New user to this board - Standard N Power electricity customer

trenners

Hi All

I'm just finding this forum and am beginning to finally see how much money can be saved by switching!

I've been in my house for some 6+ years and have always had Npower supplying my electricity, but it's just been standard - yep that probably makes me stupid! But I do pay monthly direct debit and I also seem to get an annual discount for loyalty (that's probably stupidity really). I actually have gas too but that's tied in.

Anyway, I've been reading through the tips and have taken my most recent bill and used the estimated charge of electricity in kwh for the year of 2644, and have tried that on a number of the switcher sites.

At present i guess I have a couple of questions, firstly using this a lot of the comparison sites have been bringing up that I could save £46 per year by switching to n-power's own 'signonline v23'. So just by going through one of them, the tariff would just move over and I would get a £15 cashback from them, but would I also still get the loyalty reward (estimated to be £60) from Npower??

Secondly, I'm presuming that this won't actually protect me against price rises? It is something I've considered, but I'm just wondering if it is worthwhile at present for me protecting myself on a fixed rate for these price rises - if i stuck with npower then fixing would increase my annual fee by £40 on what it is now - but as above i've worked out I can save £46 on present.

Thirdly I just wondered what was going on with the comparison sites? In looking at the cheapest rate at present using my annual useage of 2644 kwh, all of them bought up npower's 'signonline v23' rate as being the best saving (£46 per year) apart from on 'beat that quote' which bought up Southern Energy's I-plan, with a saving of £139.84????? How on earth is that a. right and b. not on any of the other comparators??

Thanks for anyone that replies that has any good tips!

macman

You won't get any cashback when switching to another tariff with the same supplier-the comp site and cashback site payments are for new customers.
You'd need to check the royalty reward with Npower.
If signonline v23 is a variable tariff, then the price will go up when Npower announce their own price rises shortly. No one can tell you if fixing is better or not-it's not supposed to necessarily be cheaper. What you are doing is buying an insurance against future increases-only you can decide if that is worth the extra.
The comp sites show current or announced prices-so at present signonline v23 will look competitive against anything from BG/SP/SSE.
Whatever else you so, get off Standard, as that's the single most expensive variable tariff.