Electricity and Gas Newbie

ps124

Hi everyone...

I'm pretty clueless when it comes to energy firms and deals. I moved into the house I live in about 3 years ago, set something up with NPower and been with them since. I've never read an energy bill in detail and even if I did, I probably have no idea what I'm looking at.

I've been home for a few weeks recovering from surgery so i thought i'd finally gather some courage and look into how I might be able to reduce my high energy bills.

However, there's so much information on the net about energy firms taking customers for a ride, switching etc (a lot on this website alone), that i'm not even sure where to start. Is it like shopping around for car insurance?

Anyway, I've just signed up on the cheap energy club and it looks like I could save about £450 by switching from my existing tariffs so I will look to do that.

My first question is...is there anything else I could do to find better deals? Haggle with my existing firm? etc

My second question is...Ive been looking at my NPower bills and I have no idea what I'm looking at. For example, they send a breakdown of gas and electricity in kwh which should give me the total but what they've billed me is completely different. I didn't think nothing of it until I read somewhere on this site that npower have been investigated and are guilty of incorrect billing etc.

Second question...how or what do i do to find out if I've been the victim of incorrect billing?

Please help....there's just so much info on the web, I have no idea where to start!

Thanks

aggypanthus

Might be best to read back through some threads, you may not get many replies tonight.
good luck.

System

ps124 wrote: »

Hi everyone...

I'm pretty clueless when it comes to energy firms and deals. I moved into the house I live in about 3 years ago, set something up with NPower and been with them since. I've never read an energy bill in detail and even if I did, I probably have no idea what I'm looking at.

I've been home for a few weeks recovering from surgery so i thought i'd finally gather some courage and look into how I might be able to reduce my high energy bills.

However, there's so much information on the net about energy firms taking customers for a ride, switching etc (a lot on this website alone), that i'm not even sure where to start. Is it like shopping around for car insurance?

Anyway, I've just signed up on the cheap energy club and it looks like I could save about £450 by switching from my existing tariffs so I will look to do that.

My first question is...is there anything else I could do to find better deals? Haggle with my existing firm? etc

My second question is...Ive been looking at my NPower bills and I have no idea what I'm looking at. For example, they send a breakdown of gas and electricity in kwh which should give me the total but what they've billed me is completely different. I didn't think nothing of it until I read somewhere on this site that npower have been investigated and are guilty of incorrect billing etc.

Second question...how or what do i do to find out if I've been the victim of incorrect billing?

Please help....there's just so much info on the web, I have no idea where to start!

Thanks

Firstly, you need to look at the NPower site which provides guidance as to what is on your bill.

Electricity is the easier of the 2 energies to understand. The meter will record in kWhs (a 2kW fire on for an hour will use 2kWhs of electricity). Your bill will show a unit rate per kWh so the calculation is simply units used x unit rate (usually in pence) + daily standing charge x days between bills +5% VAT.

Gas is more complicated as depending on your meter it will produce cubic metres or cubic feet used. I have a cubic metre meter so I convert my gas used in cu metres to kWhs by multiplying by 11.2. From then on the calculation is as per electricity.

Your bill will also apply any tariff discounts before totalling what you owe. The balance is simply the total less any payments you have made to your account.

As far as switching is concerned, you need 2 things: your postcode and your projected annual consumption for gas and electricity in kWh. That said, switching sites do not tell the whole story. A simple way of running a quick check on the potential saving is to look at the Tariff Comparison Rate on your current bill and compare it to the Tariff Comparison Rate on the tariff that you are considering. The TCR does most of the above calculations for you.

For example, my TCR for electricity is 14.7p/kWh. My projected consumption is 3200kWhs. My estimated total for the year is £470.40.
My TCR for gas 4.41p/kWh with a consumption of 13500kWhs = £595.49. My annual total is therefore £1065.97.

ps124

Hello...Thank you for the informative post. It was very useful.

So I contacted NPower and and spent some time with their rep who explained my previous bills. She also explained that I could switch tariffs to the online fixed tariff which would mean a saving of £41, no fixed terms and no exit fees. I can leave any time I want if I find a better deal. I also used the energy club on this website and npower came up the cheapest. Seems like a no brainer to me right? The TCRs remain the same.

One question I had, no one actually comes to do my meter reading, I think they estimate. An uncle mentioned to me that I should use exact meter readings with the energy firms so that my bill would be more accurate. Is that true? :undecided

Thanks.

Nada666

npower do have some reasonably priced tariffs - you should also check having different tariffs for each fuel with npower as they allow this.

As to whether you should provide them with meter reads - is that a rhetorical question? Of course you should compare the meter estimates used on the statements with the actual meter reads so that you know the true state of your account.

As to the bill do not worry too much about parsing their bills (I can't). Concentrate on reading your meter and quickly calculating how much you have spent (as Hengus explains.) Compare that with how much you have paid. Once you know that then you can worry about making sense of their statements and bills.