Do I switch or Stay?

MrsJT_2

Hi All,

I've been looking at switching our gas and electric suppliers, at the moment we pay £97 per month and have a dual fuel tarrif.

At present we have a standard cash plan that we pay on receipt of this bill, I've looked at switching to see if we can save and have the following options....

Stay with Scottish Power but change to DD for £75 per month on a veriable rate, switch to npower £73 per month variable or £75 fixed until 2015.

I'm not sure what I'm doing when it comes to switching utilities and would appreciate any help or advice anyone has.

We are currently looking at juggling our finances and switching everywhere we can to make savings.

Thank you :beer:

Sharlord

I switched with one of the comparison websites without any trouble - can highly recommend it. If you go for one with cuddly themed comparison, you can also sell the free gift online for a wee bit extra courtesy of ebay and people with too much money to burn on 'collector' toys!

As for variable vs fixed, we went with variable simply because we're likely to move house and I'm not entirely sure the current market gives any good indication that prices will rise/fall significantly (though that's rapidly changing if all reports are to be believed!)

JamesMason_2

Mrs T, these boards are full of people unhappy with the state NPower had gotten the self into. Scottish Power still seem to be a company suffering from dis-integrated systems. What this means to you is that is something goes wrong, or you wish to change an aspect of your account, then be prepared for headaches. I'd personally rate SP above NPower, but wouldn't use either.

Having a direct debit will save you a goodly deal of money as you have found out. Go to your bill or provider and request annual consumption figures in kilowatt hours.

Uswitch I believe has the biggest market share of all the comparison sites, so is a good place to start.

Enter your location, tariff and consumption figures. Remember to click the button that states show me all tariffs, including the ones they cannot switch you to today. This is because some utilities prefer you to switch through their own websites rather than pay a fee to the switching site for their help. Within a few seconds you should have a choice.

When viewing the results, steer clear of the minnows too.

MrsJT_2

Thank you both :beer:

Who would you recommend? Obvioulsy I want to go cost effective but do not want to have issues with a company either, so far we haven't had any issues with SP but on a variable rate theres always that worry of bills rocketing, nothing is simple anymore unfortunately!

KTF

First find out your annual consumption in Kw and feed this into the various comparison sites.

That will then give you an idea of how much you can save if you switch suppliers and is a much better way of doing a comparison than going on the monthly amount you currently pay.