Which Gas & Electricity Provider to choose?

lowesm

Hello, my partner and I have just bought our first house.
We're moving in on Friday and I still haven't got a clue which energy provider to choose for our Gas & Electric.
We only have a 2 bedroom house and there are only the two of us living there for now (1 on the way!).
So any suggestions? Any comments are much appreciated!

jalexa

lowesm wrote: »

We're moving in on Friday and I still haven't got a clue which energy provider to choose for our Gas & Electric.

Welcome to the forum.

OK. First things first. The moment you become responsible for a property a "deemed" contract is created with the "current" supplier. The tariff will be standard non-online, non-direct debit i.e. not the cheapest, but you can switch without penalty.

On entry, read your meters. I recommend you take a photograph of the meter showing the reading. You then need to contact the supplier to setup an account, passing the meter readings. The supplier is normally obvious from labels or "to the occupier" letters. If not there are ways of finding out.

Be aware that the supplier may try to talk you into (probably) a tariff with a "lock-in". Up to you how you handle that.

Meanwhile get a feel for the market by playing around with a Consumer Focus accredited comparision website. Post any specific questions you have.

SSE_Employee

My advice would be find out who your supplier is and phone them up and give them a meter reading. Don't allow them to talk you into a price fix tariff yet. Ask them how many kilowatts hrs the last tennant used for the year before.

Take that information and go on a price comparision website (i find uswitch is the best one) and put in your address details and then your annual consumption, and choose the cheapest tariff that comes up. Check if the tariff is fixed as you never know if there will be another price increase. Once you have selected your tariff the change of supply process is around 28 days... when you join your new supplier give them a reading and then they will give it to the company who were supplying you when you moved in and hey presto, you're set up on the cheapest tariff.