Add your feedback on energy supplier Powershop

wakeupalarm

Hengus wrote: »

Powershop gives the impression on comparison sites that it offers 3 tariffs: Easy Saver; Easy Saver Promise and its Standard Variable Tariff. In truth, there is only one tariff: the standard variable tariff. However, there is what equates to a fixed term contract offer (The Easy Saver Promise). For the FIRST year only, if you do not buy any power packs then, at the end of the year, Powershop will credit your account to the Easy Saver Promise price. To get this price, you have to stay with Powershop for 12 months. You can leave at anytime without an exit fee but you will end up paying for the energy at the standard variable rate (unless you have purchased any discounted packs). I buy discounted packs. If I had transferred to a new supplier on the 31st August, then I would have paid £74.04 for £86.79 worth of energy.

Note: some comparison sites such as Which Switch show Easy Saver as a tariff. Sensibly, imho, MSE CEC does not. It only lists The Easy Saver Promise and the Standard Variable Tariff. All the statements that I receive are based on the variable tariff. Charges are offset by using discounted packs. For example, if I buy a pack worth £11.50 for £10 then I pay Powershop £10. When this pack is applied to my account, the value applied is £11.50. I hope that makes sense?

So if there is only 1 tariff, which as far as I can see is variable rate. What happens if they increase the price of their SVR tariff.

They have no exit fee so you can leave but if you left before your 1 year was up you would lose the easy saver promise?

How much can you save percentage wise over the course of the year?

[Deleted User]

Assuming the same limits are applied to everyone (??) the biggest savers are likely to be small households like me. As just buy the 25% packs, and the tiny 28% pack... then hope the standard price doesn't rise massively. I've only bought 5 x advance packs and I'm virtually covered well into the new year.

It's the first couple of months that are the most expensive as mentioned above, as there's no ability to buy an advance pack for the first 2 periods (but you can still get in-month packs)

I'm estimated to use 3500 kwh over the next year according to my powershop bill / 'account review' that arrived yesterday.

I can't imagine it'll be as good a deal for say a 4 person household using 15k over the next year - although there is still potential for saving if you're on an expensive plan at the moment, depending on your needs/preferences, there are likely to be cheaper fixed tariffs.

I've done a comparison with a friend, and we opted against joining them to PowerShop, as a 10 month fix elsewhere worked out cheaper for their high usage, plus cashback, and the ability to switch away again in 9 months hopefully before the set of prices hikes for next winter, and gain even more cashback

System

wakeupalarm wrote: »

So if there is only 1 tariff, which as far as I can see is variable rate. What happens if they increase the price of their SVR tariff.

They have no exit fee so you can leave but if you left before your 1 year was up you would lose the easy saver promise?

How much can you save percentage wise over the course of the year?

If they increase their tariff, then they will give you notice. If you stay for 12 months, then my understanding is that the Easy Saver Promise that you signed up to will still apply. This is what it said when I signed up:

Promotion Terms and Conditions:

The Easy Saver Promise works out the maximum annual cost of your electricity with Powershop over the next year at your property based on the standing daily charge (£/day) and unit rate (£/kWh) and the usage information you provided. You can beat your Easy Saver Promise price by buying Powerpacks to make savings versus our standard rate.

The Easy Saver Promise offer does not apply if within a year of becoming a customer: (A) you switch away from Powershop or move to a new property supplied by Powershop; (B) at the time we calculate any difference owed on your Easy Saver Promise, you owe Powershop more than £100 which is at least 60 days overdue (whether on this property or another property).

fewkeste

Essexuser wrote: »

Just considering changing power supplier and on checking on a comparison website it would appear that Powershop could save me circa £200 per year. Having done a bit of research, including reading through the very informative posts on this thread and being intrinsically lazy, the question I pose is this: The quoted saving of £200 appears to be achieved merely by using the Powershop standard rate and not having to concern myself continuinally worrying about buying Powerpacks. Could one of the obviously knowedgeable members on this forum confirm this is the case?

You are correct in your assumption. You can sign up and do nothing and Powershop will buy Standard Power on your behalf to cover your consumption every billing period (once a month). Or, you could save up to about 20% of your annual Powershop bill by buying discounted chunks of credit when it is made available.

The best way to understand the Powershop way of doing things is to think of how Pay as you go mobile phones work. You have a ‘pot’ which is credited with money and that pot is used to pay your bill each month. If you do nothing, Powershop will buy sufficient credit to put into that pot every month to pay your bill.

Alternatively, you can buy discounted credit yourself to put into that pot and save money. So, in the example Hengus quoted you spend £10 and actually get £11.50 worth of credit put into your pot – i.e. £1.50 free money. In the best examples you could spend £50 and get over £65 worth of credit in your pot – £15 worth of free money.

To get this discount you would have to buy the credit two or three months in advance. For example, buying £50 of credit now for use in the December/January period will get you £65.25 worth of credit to put into your pot. Does that make sense? You’re offered the opportunity to pre-pay a chunk of money towards your future bills and are given extra credit into your pot for doing so.

In the above example spend £50 and get an extra £15.25 put into your pot - £15.25 of free credit towards your bill for the December/January billing period.

Essexuser

Thanks very much for the explanation fewkeste, it's clarified the position for me (I knew I'd get some useful info from the forum).

Just one point arising from your explanation, how accurate do you have to be in your forward planning/estimating. Put another way, if I did summon the energy to forward buy power, e.g using your example of buying £62.5 worth of power for £50 for use in December/January, what happens if I don't use all that power in the relevant months, i.e. what happens to the unused credit?

Thanks in advance for the very helpful explanations.

neilsedaka

Unused credit just rolls over to the next period. Unused credit does not disappear into the ether. If you ever decide to leave Powershop they will refund any unused credit.

Essexuser

Thanks for that confirmation. I think I have enough now to give them a ring in the morning.

fewkeste

Essexuser wrote: »

Thanks very much for the explanation fewkeste, it's clarified the position for me (I knew I'd get some useful info from the forum).

Just one point arising from your explanation, how accurate do you have to be in your forward planning/estimating. Put another way, if I did summon the energy to forward buy power, e.g using your example of buying £62.5 worth of power for £50 for use in December/January, what happens if I don't use all that power in the relevant months, i.e. what happens to the unused credit?

Thanks in advance for the very helpful explanations.

As neilsedaka has indicated you never lose left over credit. It just sits in your pot waiting to be put towards your next bill. You then have opportunities throughout the month to buy discounted credit to top your pot up ready for the next bill. If you buy too much it doesn’t matter – it sits in your pot until the next but one bill. If you buy too little, when it’s billing time Powershop will automatically top your pot up for you.

Without an account to view and use, it must be very strange for a potential customer to understand what is going on, but once you have an account it all becomes clear. There are some demo videos on YouTube.

You can manage your account online via their website or via an app on a smartphone. I know the Powershop Android app is very good (I assume the Apple one is as well) and you can download the app before your account goes live if you have a smartphone. This is a good thing to do because there is a demo mode on the app which is quite useful and it will familiarise you with the different parts of the app before your account goes live.

In some respects the app is better than the website – it actually tells you the amount in credit or owing for each month/billing period in real pounds whereas the website indicates how many days you have pre-paid by colouring them green in a calendar displayed on the website. You don’t need the app if you have a tablet, laptop or PC but the app is a very useful additional thing to have. You could in theory run your entire account just with the app – it does everything you need to do.

Also when I was a new customer I visited the website every day to see what ‘discount deals’ were available (the Powershop term is Powerpacks or Special Packs) but that’s not necessary as you become more familiar with the systems and learn roughly when the discount deals will appear each month – you very quickly learn/understand the timings and pattern of deals.

Once you understand how to run your account it takes minimal effort to keep on top of things and get great discounts on buying your power. As a general rule, the further in advance you buy power, the greater the discount you get. Hopefully other newish customers will post on here to confirm how easy it is to run your account once you understand how it works and what little effort it takes.

The best advice I can give is to invest time to read this thread from beginning to end – it answers a lot of queries a new customer might have.

You will see in my early days I and others posed the same questions as you and many other potential customers ask and now ‘I get it’ and consider myself a confident user of the system and I only went live on 30th June this year.

Good luck and enjoy saving money.

neilsedaka

As a new customer it took me a while to fully understand how Powershop works. Now I realise that I did not need to be concerned. If you join, to keep it simple, I recommend that you buy all of the discounted Powerpacks that are offered to you over at least the first 2-3 months. That's it.

mjtko

I agree that, in general, buying all the discounted power packs is the best strategy.

I would add that if you're a low consumption user (expecting an outlay of less than ~£50 per month) then consider your consumption carefully before buying all future packs for a given month if they are offered at less than 20% discount levels (maximum of 5 available to purchase at £10 each).

My current prediction is that the >20% future packs I've bought (November through January up until now) will take me quite a distance into the subsequent, less well-discounted months.

All the currently offered future packs have over 23% discounts though, so it's an easy choice and easy to manage at the moment!