Switch Energy Supplier?

wymondham

Hi All.


I'm currently on sse southern electric for my electric & gas. After watching Martins moneysaving program last night I felt guilty not looking at alternatives. I called sse and they said I was on their best deal so no joy there.


I put all my usage into uswitch and first:utility came out tops with a saving of £448 per year (deal ends March 2017).


Did some checking and some reviews didn't come out too good for them, but I know only bad experiences tend to get aired.


I'm using Economy 7 at present and my annual electric usage is day=6185, night=799 and my gas is 9524 per year. I'm paying about £1600 a year at present.


As I'm a switching virgin, is this all painless and more to the point are the uswitch figures genuine real life ones or am I likely to get a shock once I've moved over.


I've never switched before as the accounts seem to change so much it didn't seem worth it....


What's the view of the board - stay or go!!??


noticed I've put this in the wrong forum - please move!!

matelodave

If I were you I'd question why I was on an E7 tariff. You are using far more energy during the peak time than you are during the off peak period. What sort of heating/hot water system have you got and how are you using it? Your energy profile just doesn't stack up with an E7 tariff.

Southern Electric would tell you that you are on their best tariff as they've probably only got one E7 tariff - you need to do a check using a comparison site. You should also do a comparison using a single tariff deal (non E7) which I suspect would be cheaper anyway as you aren't using enough cheap rate leccy to benefit from E7.

wymondham

Thanks. Bizarrely during my conversation with sse he said I need to come off E7, then when he did the sums he said it would cost me more on E7 with them and was very surprised.


I don't have anything that runs overnight to warrant E7 - all gas heating etc. I only use 13% overnight so it would make sense to come off if I moved I suspect?

matelodave

I would also have an evaluate of how much energy I was using - nearly 7000kwh of leccy a year if you've got gas heating and hot water sounds like a lot. The average is about 3500kwh a year.


We only used 6000 last year and we are all electric for heating & hot water and we are at home all day and even the tumble dryer gets a good flogging- even in our worst year (very cold) we only managed 8800 kwh. I reckon you could save a bit by looking at where it all goes.

wymondham

I work from home and have lots of pc's so its not too bad really...

Robwiz

Switching suppliers is pretty streamlined and straightforward. Some companies have had systems problems (nPower, Scottish Power) which has led to lots of dissatisfaction. Others have become victims of their own success (e.g. Ovo Energy which had competitive tariffs and good initial customer service) due to rapid growth.

If you go with a tariff with full online management then there isn't too much to go wrong – as long as you pay your direct debits the supplier won't cut you off and all the rest is just sorting out admin which always happens in the end – and sooner if you are reasonable, polite and persistent.

I echo the other comments – your energy consumption looks very high and there must be scope for reducing your usage by switching off equipment when it's not in use. Also, before dropping your E7 tariff why not experiment with running items like washing machines and dishwashers during the cheap rate hours to take advantage of the cheaper rate?

We run our house on electricity for everything (including heating), work from home with lots of PCs and only used 7400 kWh of electricity last year.