EDF Blue - Is it really a no-brainer?

JJ_Egan

sillygoose wrote: »

On the subject of EDF Blue+ ...

I was just about to click 'switch' as its £250 a year cheaper for me and fixed but stopped when I noticed it mentioned "calculation will assume that you are paying a fixed monthly direct debit"

Followed by "If you would like to pay by variable Direct Debt amount or by Cash Cheque please contact us on 0800 056 5927"

Does anyone know what this is all about? is the tariff not available or more expensive if paid by variable DD?

I hate those fixed payment schemes as I end up 'lending' them a lot of money interest free during the warm seasons and its hard to get it back. I just want to pay for what I used each month.

Disillusioned! Thanks.

My sign up process asked what the annual consumption was for the last twelve months . This was in order to calculate a fixed DD amount based upon my consumption . As those figures where not to hand we worked off an estimate to give a DD figure . That i expect may well need to be higher during the winter months .
That was the contract terms i signed to as offered .
Every supplier i have been with has always ended up changing the DD amount during the life of the contract .
My goal was to lock my energy prices for two years before EDF pulled the tariff and before any general price rise . I probably will not save anything over my current soon to end tarrif but neither will i suffer a price rise when it ends .

jje

ssb22

To try to help people on this thread I made my own calculator (simple spreadsheet-like thing in Javascript) and tried to post a link to it, but someone thought I was a spammer and deleted my post with no explanation. Even though my page is on a university website with NO adverts. Remind me not to bother next time.

Coulrophobia

We are on British Gas standard tariff dual fuel and today i ran our annual usage figures through the price comparison sites to compare with EDF Blue, i might have done it wrong but here is what i got back

Gas usage is 15,267 kWh per year and elec is 11,748kWh. (from the annual statement) (NORWEB area)

EDF Blue saving £233 if i switch to monthly DD (but i don't like the idea of 'lending' money out in summer, like others have said, but that applies to the other quoted 'savings' aswell, saving for lending via DD payment)

Money supermarket says Scottish Power though would be £329 cheaper a year.

Energy Helpine says Scottish Power would be £330 cheaper a year. (i.e. pretty much the same as Money supermarket say)

So either way, unless I have got something very wrong (which is possible and knowing my luck highly probable) Scottish Power is better for me than EDF Blue.

Has anyone else noticed this difference is it down to our high electricity usage?

JimmyTheWig

Coulrophobia wrote: »

So either way, unless I have got something very wrong (which is possible and knowing my luck highly probable) Scottish Power is better for me than EDF Blue.

Is the Scottish Power tariff fixed? Until when?

molerat

Yes, it is down to your incredibly high electricity use. SP is 1.8p per unit cheaper than EDF but with a higher standing charge* so the more you use the more you save. For the average user, 3500 kWh per year, the difference is not very much and for me EDF is £7 cheaper than SP, using your figures SP is £214 cheaper than EDF. One reason why you must never take the unit price at face value. I did several comparisons using max and min figures to give me a true picture of what I could expect to pay / save in different scenarios.

* SP does not have a standing charge but 21.052-11.346 *225*4 = £87.35 against EDFs £53.66

Coulrophobia

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

Is the Scottish Power tariff fixed? Until when?

moneysupermarket says fixed until 31/12/13, energy helpline says January 2014, so again only slight differences.

Coulrophobia

molerat wrote: »

Yes, it is down to your incredibly high electricity use.

time to start removing electrical items i think. since we are on gas central heating and cooking, i have no idea why the electric use is so high though.

JimmyTheWig

Coulrophobia wrote: »

moneysupermarket says fixed until 31/12/13, energy helpline says January 2014, so again only slight differences.

So that is fixed, in effect, for one and a half winters. EDF is fixed for two winters.

JimmyTheWig

Coulrophobia wrote: »

time to start removing electrical items i think. since we are on gas central heating and cooking, i have no idea why the electric use is so high though.

Tumble dryer?

Coulrophobia

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

Tumble dryer?

used very rarely though, maybe once a fortnight.

Does it cost to have the meter checked for accuracy?