Sainsbury's Energy Price Hike

Andi2017

Hi All, I'm new to the forum.

I swapped to Sainsbury's Energy in July 2016 after seeing Martin on morning TV. I pay £75 a month and made a massive saving. I've received an email this morning telling me my monthly DD is going up to £150.50 per month!!

Am I ok to switch? I can't find an email that says I'm locked in. Thanks

System

If you are on a Sainsburys Energy fixed tariff then there will be a £30 exit fee for gas and electric.You can switch to any British Gas deals exit fee. Sainsburys and BG have in the past tried to raise my d/d when it was unjustified. Check your annual usage to see if they are correct.£150 a month is much more than the average user.You would have to be a high user for £150 a month.A phone call to them was enough for them to reinstate my normal usage direct debit.
Hopefully you did set an accurate yearly usage to obtain a direct debit which is justified. If you have just had a guess then they will have seen your current winter usage and raised it but the gas winter usage does not reflect a monthly average.

dogshome

Not familiar with S'bury tariffs, but it's likely that your present one expires at the end of July 2017 and has penalties if you leave early.

If this the case stay with it ! Energy prices have increased substantialy since last Autumn, particularly Electricity, and it's unlikely you'll find any other supplier charging less than you presently pay.

So far as the hike in your D/Debit is concerned, it's probably due to the amount of Elec/Gas you are consuming - A fixed tariff is only fixed in the price you pay per Kwh consumed, it is not an all-you-can-eat- for-a- year at a fixed cost.

If your bills are so infrequent that you didn't realise you were building up debt,
send S'bury meter readings every 8 weeks and get a bill, then study that bill to find ways of reducing consumption

bloss0m

If your direct debt has gone up nearly double then I can only assume your direct debts haven't kept up with your consumption, you were under paying for a long time.Always submit actual meter readings not rely on estimate

Energy has gone up so its unlikely when you change that you get a better deal unless that deal your on was very poor anyway

JJ_Egan

OP before you do anything check your account as to what you owe .
As others said the reason a DD goes up in contract is due to you underpaying .

System

There is a lot of good advice above; however, given the frequency of these types of posts, I just wonder why Ofgem ( which purports to be the consumer's champion) doesn't ban the word Fixed in a favour of 1, 2 or 3 year contracts. If I recall, E.oN used to have the term Fixed DDs on its website - with the detail underneath. It is no wonder consumers get confused. I would also like to see the abolition of standing charges with a simple kWh price which would make comparisons easier and do away with the confusing TCR. For a business transaction which is inherently so simple, the industry does like to make things difficult - I wonder why!!

wavelets

I think someone is having a bit of fun on a wet Sunday morning :cool:

If you are on a fixed tariff, then no price changes will affect you (until the end of the fixed period)

If you are on a variable tariff:
(a) I very much doubt "a massive saving" was possible.
(b) the last change in price I can see to Sainsbury's variable tariff was in March 2016 (so before the OP even switched) and that was a price decrease.

Still, don't let the facts get in the way of a wiley good ruse, eh?

System

wavelets wrote: »

I think someone is having a bit of fun on a wet Sunday morning :cool:

If you are on a fixed tariff, then no price changes will affect you (until the end of the fixed period)

If you are on a variable tariff:
(a) I very much doubt "a massive saving" was possible.
(b) the last change in price I can see to Sainsbury's variable tariff was in March 2016 (so before the OP even switched) and that was a price decrease.

Still, don't let the facts get in the way of a wiley good ruse, eh?

The confusion over the word fixed is that some posters fail to understand that the amount that they pay is in no way fixed: it is only the contract term, standing charge and unit price. It follows that when a DD is increased, the immediate reaction is that the supplier is charging me more than I agreed to when I signed up.

The other problem is that not all the suppliers are good at estimating annual usage based on 6 months of readings. I had one supplier that failed to do any form of mid contract review. It is often the case that customers are hit with an un-necessarily large DD adjustment just because a contract has, say, 3 months to run. Had the review taken place 3 months earlier, then any DD increase would have been smaller.

System

I had this with British Gas. When they project your usage for the next 12 months they assume that when your tariff ends you will go onto the standard variable tariff and they use these figures in their calculations. I told them I had no intention of drifting onto a standard tariff and they re-assessed immediately. This is, of course, assuming your usage hasn't increased a lot over the original projection.

System

scgf wrote: »

I had this with British Gas. When they project your usage for the next 12 months they assume that when your tariff ends you will go onto the standard variable tariff and they use these figures in their calculations. I told them I had no intention of drifting onto a standard tariff and they re-assessed immediately. This is, of course, assuming your usage hasn't increased a lot over the original projection.

Don't blame the supplier, this is the methodology that Ofgem requires them to use.

macman

OP, it's not a price rise, it's a usage rise. Your account is in debt because you have been paying too little to cover your usage-a problem easily remedied if you submit regular meter readings.