MSE News: MoneySavingExpert.com turns energy market upside down

Norfolk_Jim

I'm a bit surprised that Martin himself is a bit miffed at the idea that this is a channelling exercise for moneysupermarket - they didnt pay all those millions out of altruism. I dont begrudge Martin his reward for creating this increadible site but it's obvious that the new owners have bought the site to make them money not to save us money.
Like I said - I dont know if its a good service or not - I hope it is - but it seems to be significantly different from some of the other "tools" on this site, like the flight checker; a really useful tool that has been very useful to me.

dlorde

The club worked well enough for me - it gave accurate costs for the consumption I entered, and the comparison figures matched what I've seen elsewhere.

This kind of alert service would be really handy for savings accounts too - I'd like to get a warning when my savings account bonus interest expires, and a list of the most competitive alternatives I could switch to...

chardir

I've signed up but unfortunately it's calculated my annual cost at £90 higher than it actually costs on my tariff, thus making all the comparisons meaningless. I suspect it's because the prices have increased since I fixed but it's a shame you can't enter your actual tariff costs rather than having to select their presets. I hope others don't get tricked into switching with the same misinformation.

londonlydia

I've not given it a try yet, but just wondered if there's a way of discounting suppliers from your choices, so you only get alerted if it's cheaper with someone you would consider?

The reason being, there's more to choosing a supplier than just the price saving. To me customer service is important and not having my time wasted (an hour of my time at work to a customer is £78, so I use this figure to estimate how much my time is worth). This automatically discounts one of the big companies for me. (Also, I do consider other factors like their Green percentage).

mapson

Hang on a minute. Can you remember the eighties? Life was so much simpler then. We just had the Gas Board and the Electricity Company. There was no need to spend hours and hours searching for the best tariffs - there was just one for each utility. All the experts agree that this current system is broken so bring back nationalised energy.

Wywth

chardir wrote: »

I've signed up but unfortunately it's calculated my annual cost at £90 higher than it actually costs on my tariff, thus making all the comparisons meaningless. I suspect it's because the prices have increased since I fixed but it's a shame you can't enter your actual tariff costs rather than having to select their presets. I hope others don't get tricked into switching with the same misinformation.

You should be able to select your actual tariff which should already have the correct unit prices.

Are you sure you selected the correct one as there can be very many options with remarkably similar names

Wywth

londonlydia wrote: »

I've not given it a try yet, but just wondered if there's a way of discounting suppliers from your choices, so you only get alerted if it's cheaper with someone you would consider?

The reason being, there's more to choosing a supplier than just the price saving. To me customer service is important and not having my time wasted (an hour of my time at work to a customer is £78, so I use this figure to estimate how much my time is worth). This automatically discounts one of the big companies for me. (Also, I do consider other factors like their Green percentage).

I don't think that is an option. You can only choose the amount by which you save as the point at which to start receiving alerts.

You don't have to act on an alert and you could just ignore/delete it if you don't like the particular offer (whether it be the supplier or some other detail of the tariff)

I think I would prefer to know and elect to ignore than filter out money saving possibilities.

For years I was against the idea of paying monthly by DD (I still am to be honest) but when I eventually realised just how much I was often having to spend by not agreeing to tariffs that required a monthly payment by DD, the cost advantage eventually over-rode the other disadvantages of paying that way.

Wywth

mapson wrote: »

Hang on a minute. Can you remember the eighties? Life was so much simpler then. We just had the Gas Board and the Electricity Company. There was no need to spend hours and hours searching for the best tariffs - there was just one for each utility. All the experts agree that this current system is broken so bring back nationalised energy.

I remember back then. There were no computers, no forums, and trolls were nothing more than fantasy animals that lived under bridges written about in childrens books.
Ah those were the days...

kanimisso99

chardir wrote: »

I've signed up but unfortunately it's calculated my annual cost at £90 higher than it actually costs on my tariff, thus making all the comparisons meaningless. I suspect it's because the prices have increased since I fixed but it's a shame you can't enter your actual tariff costs rather than having to select their presets. I hope others don't get tricked into switching with the same misinformation.

The same thing happened to me but I then realised that I did not enter the tariff name correctly for gas, it was left as the default Standard Tariff. I use dual energy but did not notice that I needed to enter the same tariff name TWICE for both gas and electricity! If one of the tariff dropdown menus is greyed out once I choose dual energy that would probably be more user-friendly (I think a few other comparison sites are like this).

I'm not saying you've made the same mistake as me but if other comparison sites display your current price correctly it's worth a check.

welshee

It's a bit of a copy of the EDF blue price promise...slightly more slightly less..

Sad to see the site going this way !
Downhill.
Quick behind the shelters...i await the barrage of insults.