Question about my online energy tariff comparison

ianpwilliams

I've just had a look on the USwitch and NPower websites to compare prices, because USwitch have sent me an email telling me that my NPower tariff has ended.

When I put NPower's predicted annual usage figures (from my most recent bill) into the USwitch and NPower websites, they came up with these:

USwitch - £65/month fixed until June 2015 with First Utility (£30 cancellation fee per fuel)

NPower - £72/month fixed until Dec 2017 (4 years!), and with no cancellation fee either. I have no idea why this wasn't listed on the USwitch website

What's weird is, at the moment I'm paying £53/month. NPower wrote to me a couple of months ago wanting to put my Direct Debit up from my current £53/month to £70/month, so I rang them, and they looked at my account, and they said that actually £53/month is probably ok. My NPower account is currently £186 in credit though, so I'm guessing that they must be using that credit to keep my Direct Debit down. So I'm guessing that First Utiltity's £65/month and NPower's £72/month are probably about what I should be paying.

So now I'm wondering if I should switch to the NPower £72/month tariff, and just accept the fact that I have to start paying £17/month more than I am now, and then at least I will have fixed prices for 4 years, and hopefully my account credit also shouldn't be used up?

The other thing I wondered is, what if NPower's predictions of my annual energy usage are too high (which I suspect they might be)? Would they be able to bring my monthly Direct Debit down, to stop my credit from getting out of control? Or does a fixed tariff mean a fixed tariff, and it can't go up or down?

apt

I suspect there's been a glitch as Npower Dec 2017 is expensive and there must be significantly cheaper shorter fixes available. Look at the estimated annual cost, not the DD amount that suppliers want to charge you initially.

ianpwilliams

I rechecked USwitch, and First Utility is £65/month or £784.54/year (I've edited my first post), and Npower is £72/month (£874.23/year). So it's a case of whether to pay £7/month more to have frozen prices for 4 years (and no cancellation fee) instead of 1.5 years. There still doesn't seem to be anything significantly cheaper though.

And the fact that the NPower tariff on USwitch says it would be £2 more per year, suggests that I'm definitely should be paying more like £72/month.

So surely the Npower Dec one is the way to go?

macman

Forget what you pay monthly, it's the annual cost that matters. If you have credit of £186 then that may reduce your DD (though at this time of year you should have the maximum winter credit in place).

ianpwilliams

I'm not sure what you mean by the annual cost. When I enter my usage figures into USwitch and NPower I always put my annual usage in kHw (as they recommend), and when I look at the results, they seem to work out the same whether I display them as monthly, or display them as annually and divide by 12.

macman

All you need to do is put your existing tariff details into any comp site and it will tell you the current annual cost. That is what you need to compare to the other tariffs available. What you currently pay on monthly DD is not necessarily 1/12 of the annual costs because of the factors already mentioned. It's simply an educated guess by the supplier at this point in time.

ianpwilliams

That's what I did. I went to USwitch, and entered my NPower Go Save S tariff details, and my estimated annual kHw usage for electric and gas, and those are the figures they came up with

ianpwilliams

Sounds like the best thing to do is to ring NPower and find out how much I should be paying, and take it from there.

macman

If you are were on a cheap fix that has now expired, then a £144 pa increase for a current fix to 2015 is perfectly feasible. Fixing to 2017 will inevitably cost you much more, and no one knows if it will prove the cheaper deal over 4 years or not. What you are paying the extra for is essentially an insurance policy against further rises.

ianpwilliams

I was actually on a variable tariff, which has just ended, and prices are due to go up anyway based on a letter than npower sent. So these were the figures that USwitch produced:

Current NPower - £871.64pa (according to USwitch), which works out at £72.64/month, although I've only been paying £53/month, using my credit to make up the different it seems.

And then I've got the cheapest fixed rate option, and the npower longer fixed rate option (and various fixed rate options in between, which aren't as good as the First Utility one):

First Utility - £784.54pa (to Jun 2015) - £65.37/month
Npower Dec 2017 - £874.23pa (to Dec 2017) - £72.85/month

So with these two Npower would be £89.69/year or £7.48/month more than First Utility, which doesn't seem like a huge difference for 2 extra years of frozen prices.