What is your switching savings threshold?

CashStrapped

What is your threshold, in terms of savings, to initiate a switch to another energy supplier?

I am not talking about tariff hopping with the same supplier but a switch to another provider completely.

Just interested as to what amount would convince people to switch.

Thanks

ajbell

£1 will do for me.
I switched 5 times last year and have switched once this year although this year the switch was just the tariff not company.
Have just checked uswitch and first utility have a new tariff which will save me £62 over a year but I have to pay £60 exit fee which I will do. So i will save another £2.

phillw

I tell the CEC to email me when the savings are greater than any exit fees. It's not an exact science, if you are with E.ON then you have to take into account that you won't receive clubcard points any more if you switch. British gas used to give nectar points, but stopped in December 2015.

Of course you can't predict the future and either your current tariff, the cheapest one in CEC or another tariff could turn out to be the cheapest when you actually know what energy you used. It depends on how you class risk.

ajbell

You can get another £20-£30 each time through cashback as well.

backfoot

My threshold is quite low. I would say £20 per fuel. It is so easy to change and takes me around 5 minutes.

Generally I look to contracts which have no or low exit fees so I can move with the market quickly as prices have been falling and should fall further.

When things stabilise, I will look to a fix into a competitive price.

Cashback can also add to savings or offset exit fees.

Savings have actually been recently much greater than my threshold and splitting gas and electricity suppliers has produced really good savings. This is the first time that I have not used dual fuel.

brewerdave

I look to make a real saving without any switching bonuses, so as I'm with EON and their £60 ETC thats what I set my target at for supplier switches.

gt94sss2

ajbell wrote: »

£1 will do for me.
I switched 5 times last year and have switched once this year although this year the switch was just the tariff not company.
Have just checked uswitch and first utility have a new tariff which will save me £62 over a year but I have to pay £60 exit fee which I will do. So i will save another £2.

If you keep switching provider for only a few pounds savings + have to pay exit fees each time you are actually losing money (i.e. the £62 saving above is only if you keep your supply with them for the entire year)

ajbell

Well I haven't actually paid the exit fees yet but it looks like they are being applied now.
I'm with first utility and they allowed you to switch Internally and waived the exit fees but that seems to have stopped now.
I have solar panels and we are coming to the point of the year where the standing daily charge is more important than the cost per unit.
For instance I currently take around 2kwh from the grid but generate around 10kWh and use that to heat my water too.