Scottish Power Stick Or Twist

tonycarew

Presently on the SP Online fix November 2013 gas & electric monthly DD.(no penalty for leaving early)

Did some searching via the comparison sites and quite like the look of NPower dual fuel switch fixed rate until Feb 2015.

Presently pay £104 per month with SP,NPower will be £117 per month.(figures obtained using yearly KWH actual use.)

Quandry to fix now with NPower thinking its a good deal and dont want to miss out.

Or hold my nerve to see what becomes available between now and November 1st 2013.

Any advice,thoughts,musings extremely welcome.

anotheruser

I did nearly this.

I was on Scottish Powers' Online Price Fix August 2013, but switched to nPowers' Fixed Feb 2015 through Topcashback (decided against the free wine or MSE offer).

According to uSwitch I would be paying £8 less a month than my current DD (£95 - dual fuel). Obviously this is subjective as to what I use. I also used my past 12 months kWh to compare.


What tipped it for me was:

nPower
(+) Nice android app to send meter readings easily and whenever.
(+) Allows me to have a fixed direct debit. If I am in debt at the billing date, I will simply get a bill in the post minus the DDs I've paid (obviously).
(+) Fixed billing dates (IE quarterly). See a (-) below which will explain this one.
(+) Cheaper
(+) A nice simple energy monitor (which I actually don't use).
(+) No penalty exit fee from the tariff, I believe.
(+) Use Wallace and Gromit in marketing - I like them
(-) Switched dual fuel but only had a letter through for gas, not electricity. It's been nearly a month now since I switched. Still not properly switched, nor received an electricity "welcome" letter.


Scottish Power
(+) Fairly easy to contact.
(-) Whenever I send a meter reading, I am billed there and then.
(-) A guy called me the other day to ask if they had done anything to make me move. I said no and gave fixed DD for a reason. He said no energy company has a fixed DD rate. I told him they do as nPower had been doing it previous years in other properties for me. He still insisted they didn't.
(-) Put my DD up every time I had a bill. I suspect they would put it down again after summer months, then up again after winter - useless!*

*On a side note, members of my family pay a fixed rate. In the summer they go a fair bit in credit, but during the winter months they get a bit in debt. However during the next summer they go wildly back in credit again so it works out nicely for everyone.


So now I am in the middle of switching.
I sort of wish I had looked at British Gas direct (they claim to be even cheaper than nPower) but the comparison sites didn't even show them in the top 5.

The plus points were a no winner for Scottish Power but to their credit, the time I have been with them, I haven't had any problems.

I would wait a little longer, but start transferring next month.

tonycarew

Thanks so much anotheruser for your very detailed analysis.

The NPower option is certainly tempting.

Suppose it boils down to how long the NPower deal is available/is there much chance of any of the other providers offfering something better in the next few weeks.

Noah'strolly

I signed up to switch to n power fixed 2015 last month and just got a call from Scottish Power to get me to stay. Apparently they launched a fixed til November 2014 which is cheaper than npower's Feb 15 just a bit shorter. I've looked at the figures and agreed to stay but hubby's not sure I did the right thing deciding over a phone call. You might want to check it out. It definitely wasn't available when I did my research last month. I just hope this isn't going to get messy with all this switching and switching back.

JamesMason_2

In my league table SP are above NPower, but I wouldn't want to go back to SP.

Someone else maybe?

tonycarew

Noah'strolly wrote: »

I signed up to switch to n power fixed 2015 last month and just got a call from Scottish Power to get me to stay. Apparently they launched a fixed til November 2014 which is cheaper than npower's Feb 15 just a bit shorter. I've looked at the figures and agreed to stay but hubby's not sure I did the right thing deciding over a phone call. You might want to check it out. It definitely wasn't available when I did my research last month. I just hope this isn't going to get messy with all this switching and switching back.

Hi

I noticed the SP deal but it worked out about £3 per month more than NPower and as you said its only fixed until October.

JamesMason_2

Note what I said here too

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=62158367&postcount=5