Cheaper tariff or capped price tariff?

ianpwilliams

Seeing as NPower's prices have just gone up I had a look on USwitch to compare prices, using annual kWh usage based on my bill, which is based on my readings.

I can apparently save £71/year on the NPower Go Save tariff, or I could save only £4/year on Scottish Power's Online Fixed Price Energy September 2014, which has fixed prices until September 2014. But it all depends on when Scottish Power last increased their prices, and when they intend to do it next.

Does anyone know which one I should go for? And does anyone know about past/future price increases at Scottish Power?

Wywth

ianpwilliams wrote: »

Seeing as NPower's prices have just gone up I had a look on USwitch to compare prices, using annual kWh usage based on my bill, which is based on my readings.

I can apparently save £71/year on the NPower Go Save tariff, or I could save only £4/year on Scottish Power's Online Fixed Price Energy September 2014, which has fixed prices until September 2014. But it all depends on when Scottish Power last increased their prices, and when they intend to do it next.

Does anyone know which one I should go for? And does anyone know about past/future price increases at Scottish Power?

It's up to you to decide if paying £67 a year extra (at todays prices) is worth it for the surety of knowing the price won't change over the term.

It doesn't matter when SP last increased prices or will increase them again, as the tariff you are interested from them is fixed ... so the price will not change over the term

ianpwilliams

Yeah, the only thing I was thinking it that if SP have raised their prices recently, then they may not rise them again until next September anyway, in which case I would have wasted money by paying for the less-cheap tariff. I know that the energy companies tend to up their prices around the same time as each other these days, and NPower's just went up. So I think I'll just go for the cheaper NPower tariff.

Wywth

All the big 6 suppliers have raised their prices recently (within the last 3-4 months)

Remember, the SP fixed tariff is fixed until 31st Aug 2014, not 2013

ianpwilliams

Good point. It's a £6/month difference between the two tariffs, so I'm not sure. It does seem like it's been a while since the last energy price rises, before the recent ones. I'mt thinking it probably won't work out much different either way.

zerog

npower includes £100 annual discount. You need to stay with them for a whole number of years for max benefit.

So if they raise their prices in Nov 2013 and you want to switch again, then you will have paid £15 more to npower than if you didn't switch.

The question is, do you think npower will raise their prices by more than £67 per year (for your usage) by Sep 2014? Their last price rise was a 10% increase on average. Of course nobody can say what their next increase will be.

Personally I'd go with SP but maybe I just have an irrational dislike of npower based on my current experience with them.

ianpwilliams

I have been with npower for quite a few years now, so I am probably getting a benefit from the £100 discount (although it's hard to tell with the bills being so complicated). I was annoyed with them when I was told that I could have been on a cheaper tariff for quite a while because of my very low gas usage (a gas fire and that's it), but apart from they've been ok. So I think I might just go for the cheaper option for now and go for the Go Save option.

Thanks for the help everyone