Choosing a fixed tarrif

StudentSavers

Hi,
I've just bought a new home and the current provider is EDF Energy. Firstly is anyone a current customer of EDF and has any opinions of them as a provider (they have already tried to charge me an extortionate amount for the overlapping dates when I bought the place until I phoned them to set them straight)? I have spoken to them and have been put on the standard dual fuel tarrif for the moment (with Economy 7 for electricity) until I have had a chance to shop around the fixed tarrifs available.

Secondly, I have used the comparison sites energyhelpline and USwitch to try and see what my cheapest option for tarrif is (we are a 5 person student house in East Midlands so we'll be using a fair amount of electricity but it hould be mostly evenings and weekends as we're all on pretty much 9 to 5 timetables). The difficulty is that I have no information of previous usage (the previous owners are useless) so these comparisons are purely going on assumptions and the number of people in the house etc.
Both these sites have come up wih Scottish Power (Online Energy Saver 15) as saving me the most money but the fact that they're tarrifs have no Standing Charges and are done purely on units worries me because I imagine our unit usage will be quite high. The next cheapest they've highlighted is NPower (Sign On-line 23) and from some calculations I'd done (using the details of their tarrifs) to incorporate the discounts etc that they offer I come up with the same results (alhtough obviously i couldn't include Scottish Power in my calculations as I have no idea of unit usage).
This is the first time I've bothered to look into my options for energy provider in so much detail but as there ae so many of us in the house and with a high electricity usage I think its very important to make the right choice

Any advice would be gratefully received
Thanks

HalloweenJack

hi and welcome:

re EDF - its a hotly deabted topic here - phone at a busy time of the day and you`ll be on hold for 30 mins or more , with many nightmare tales of direct debits changing ,tariffs not being applied properly and poor customer service - , likewise there are those who have a trouble free experience and are happy (although like everything you generally dont hear from those!)

abput the `extortionate amount` - you gave them the meter readings when you moved in and quite possibly they diodnt match those when the previous occupyer left - but you opened a new account and started again , so thats all sorted now.


eco7 - means you have cheaper electrcitiy at night, so am assuming you have storage heaters? E7 is a night tariff , so heavy use in evenings (before midnight) and weekends wouldnt quite benefit as much as a regular tariff (imo) IF you do NOT have storage heaters - if you have storage heaters and its an electric house then stick to E7

the tariffs you mentioned are not fixed - they are variable ones which will go up in time but might (ho ho ho) go down - fixed tariffs dont change and you usually pay a premium for having the price fixed for the duration.


right now the cheapest of the fixed tariffs is likely to be with EDF and fixed saver v2

victor2

Obviously with a new house, your anticipated usage is going to be a shot in the dark. EDF are pretty helpful once you get through to them. They are generally competitive with their tariffs too. Standard tariffs are usually the most expensive though, so I'd speak to EDF and see what tariff you could switch to that has no penalty for leaving. That will give you a bit of time to build up some usage history so that you can review things at a later date. With all the price increases having just gone through with the major suppliers, there's unlikely to be another in the near future.

StudentSavers

Thanks to both of you.
I was under the impression from the details on the comparison sites that those tarrifs i mentioned with Scottish Power and NPower were fixed because they gave dates for the end of the tarrif or they stated they were for 12months, for example. Does that not mean they are fixed?

I think I might stick with EDF for the Saver V2 tarrif and have another look towards the end of the fixed period one I have an dea of usage.

Really helpful advice, thank you

HalloweenJack

no , they are both variable - but with a 12 month contract

irnbru_2

StudentSavers wrote: »

Does that not mean they are fixed?

The Scottish Power one is a discount against the standard tarriff. If the price of the standard tarriff goes up so will this one but you will have the option of switching without penalty.

For my usage it's £150 cheaper than the SP's Fixed Saver April 2013 which is what I was originally considering.