Edf To Npower ? Right Choice

KILL_BILL

I am currently on edf and are finding that the bills are quite high and after looking at the comparision site i find that i can save about £125.00 a year with npower

doies anyone have either good or bad points about npower they can tell me about - it is the sign online economy seven plan

thor

The only thing I can say about npower is that they are damn expensive for electricity in their 'home area' of Yorkshire(npower were formerly Yorkshire Electricity). I have done the opposite to you and switched to edf.

anniecave

Npower's home areas are Yorkshire and the North East and also the West Midlands area. If your supply number doesn't start with a 14,15 or 23 then you're not in a Npower home area. I would assume if a comparison site is giving you a potential £125 per year saving then you are out of Npower's home areas. In my opinion Npower are as good and as bad as others I've used. As long as your metering info is correctly registered (which it should be if you have correct bills from EDF) and the meter readings on the bills match with the readings on your meter you should be OK. I would always re work any figures given by comparison websites with your actual usage on both the old and new tariffs just to make sure you really will be saving money.

anniecave

Off topic, suppliers are normally the most expensive (on the domestic market) in their home areas as all the other suppliers take these prices and aim to undercut them. So as I live in the West Midlands, I know that Npower is normally the most expensive here.

Terrylw1

There used to be a rule about reducing prices in their home areas and they were restricted to higher prices than competitiors but thats a thing of the past. They are more interested in poaching new customers like any company and consequently, this is outside of their traditional area.

Anniecave is correct on the MPAN number, but be aware that rule changed as of last year so MPAN's can be issued based on the Supplier, not the region anymore. In so new though that it won't affect people for a long time.

bristolleedsfan

KILL_BILL wrote: »

I am currently on edf and are finding that the bills are quite high and after looking at the comparision site i find that i can save about £125.00 a year with npower

doies anyone have either good or bad points about npower they can tell me about - it is the sign online economy seven plan

ask yourself y npower are on their 7th online tariff, they are behaving like some financial providers, keep launching new accounts to be top of best buy tables whilst letting earlier accounts become uncompetitive and hoping earlier customers wont notice.

mbailey

One thing to be aware of with npower is that you only get low prices if you remain for the whole year and then pick up the annual discounts. I checked just now and for me the annual discounts for npower are around £84.

So if another cheaper tarrif comes along in 9 months time, you need to take into account the annual discount.

As for EDF they have no annual discounts, so you can leave anytime.

clever_consumer

Do not trust Npower.

Over two months ago they showed up on my door and claimed I could save money if I changed from EDF over to them. As I annoyingly found out later, when they calculated how much my last quarterly EDF bill would have been with Npower that time they used wrong rates which made it look like I could have saved almost one third on my electricity bill with npower. Happy about that I joined up.

As I found out later, they did that little con demonstration all the way with the low day rate and convieniently (for them) failed to tell me that I would be charged more than double of that day rate on the first 189 day time units in a quarter. 189 day time units is about half of what I use in three months (one quarter) by the way. In other words not only was saving one third on my bill a lie but with Npower my bills will be even more expensive than EDF at the rate I use electricity.

I live in London and quarterly I use 450 Night units and 360 Day units. Quarterly my bill with EDF comes to about £90.
With Npower's Economy 7 my quarterly bill would have been more expensive with the same amount of unit usage.
However, this might be different for you depending on where you live, how much you use and what the rates for your area are.
For me it is not worth switching over to Npower.

Additionally Npower have been messing me about for over two months with the switch (which I have cancelled now). Even though I told them about it, they kept forgetting to apply for both of he supply numbers when try and kept being refused. And they wrongly informed me on two seperate occaions that they have taken over my electricity supply which once led to me having to cancel my direct debit with EDF and then re-instate it all just be charged fees for.

In other words I personally did not have the best experience with Npower and i wouldn't recommend them to anyone.

Hope this helps.

mbailey

clever_consumer wrote: »

Do not trust Npower.
Over two months ago they showed up on my door and claimed I could save money if I changed from EDF over to them.

There is your problem. Never trust anyone turning up at your doorstep. Use the online checkers as they *should* not make the same mistakes regarding different unit prices.

One other thing I tend to do with the online checkers is to specify a fixed amount of Gas and Electric for the year in KWh, rather then giving your monthly payments or details on your house. This seems to take out some of the confusion when comparing results from different checkers. In order to do this you need to look back over the past year to calculate your annual usage. (You can't just take the last quarter and times 4, as this will not take into account higher usage in winter and less in summer.)

For me the biggest thing that annoyed me with npower is that new customers were offered cheaper tariffs than existing customers that they wouldn't allow existing customers to switch to.

clever_consumer

mbailey wrote: »

There is your problem. Never trust anyone turning up at your doorstep.

Well said. :T

Cardew

On a forum like this if you ask for opinions about any utility company you will inevitably get lots of negative comments - because with millions of customers it is equally inevitable that some people will have had a problem.

You can do a great deal to reduce problems for yourself by monitoring your account closely - particularly in the first year until a pattern of use has developed.

For instance if you use a comparison website(and don't check everything in detail), it is probable that your DD will initially be set too low as this is they way they operate - to get you to change supplier by any means, so they get their commission.

Too many people don't bother looking at their utility accounts and get a huge shock when they find they are £hundreds in debt