Warning - possibly stupid question - how to find oil supplier

penguin25

As above, how do I know what oil suppliers are near where I live (or will be living in a few weeks) or do they all just deliver everywhere ? I live on Beds/Bucks/Northants borders.

Sorry, you can tell I know nothing about oil can't you!!

suki1964

Sure none of us does till we are stuck with it

First off - ask your neighbours

Firstly they will know whos local and will deliver short notice blah blah - and secondly they would know if there is a oil buying scheme set up locally where you all order the same time to get the best deal

Secondly you get out the yellow pages for your area and ring around. A good place to start for a kind of average price is https://www.boilerjuice.com

Might not be the cheapest price but it shows an average price - if you can ring around and get cheaper - great

I think around 60p a litre is the average atm - it can change daily esp this time of year

Ebe_Scrooge

^^^^^^^

Spot-on advice. Boiler Juice as a first point of call to get a ball-park figure, then phone every company in yellow pages. In the 5 years I've lived with oil, Boiler juice was the cheapest once :-) Local companies will nearly always offer a better price, and they will vary from one company to another by as much as 10p a litre sometimes - which makes a huge difference if you're ordering 1000 litres. And the company that is cheapest this time is not necessarily the cheapest next time.

Don't get sucked into a direct debit with one supplier, phone around every time you need a fill-up. A good idea is to set yourself up a new bank account and put away £60 a month or whatever, just as if you were paying a direct debit to the gas company. That way you've got the money to pay for the fill-up when you need it, and you may even earn a few pence interest You'll soon get used to how much you use over an average year, so can adjust the amount you save accordingly.

Finally, most companies have "cut-off" points. Round us, it's 500 litre minimum delivery, and the price per litre drops by a few pence if you order 900 litres or more. So you save a bit in the long term by buying more than 900 litres ( as long as you can afford that amount all at once ). But you have to remember that the price will vary daily, so in 3 months time it will be quite different to today. Very generally it's more expensive in winter ( supply & demand and all that ), so it can sometimes be a wise move to fill up right to the brim in say August or September, hopefully that'll see you through the worst of the winter, then maybe only buy 500 in January or February if you need to, then fill back up again in the summer.

Oh, the joys of oil price gambling ;)