Misleading comparisons?

Telegraph_Sam

Tonik have put me on a "budget cost" of £663.67 p.a.. which I am not complaining about. There may be discounts and fiddles which account for the difference with energyhelpline & co.

The point is rather: Did not what they presented you with highlight separately a potential "savings" figure from switching of from memory around £232 p.a.???

The former I can live with, the latter is what got me worked up. The implication is that there is a deal on offer somewhere of £431 which from what I can see is nowhere to be seen.

SnowTiger

Telegraph_Sam wrote: »

Tonik have put me on a "budget cost" of £663.67 p.a.. which I am not complaining about. There may be discounts and fiddles which account for the difference with energyhelpline & co.

No idea what a 'budget cost' is. Is that their guesstimate of how much you'll spend?

What does your bill say about charges?

Telegraph_Sam

Yes. I interpret this to be their quote based on my / their forecasts of consumption divided by 12 = monthly budget payments, which can then be adjusted (upwards ..) if forecasts prove to be optimistic.

That is however not intended to be the focus of this thread since these calculations are specific to myself. Whereas the comparison sites' claimed "savings" figure, for switching, should be relevant to all. Even if it should turn out to be an illusion.

c.nixon

Quote from previous post ..."This is how OFGEM have decreed that the comparison should be calculated." I have witnessed today how multiple energy comparison websites (all provided by the Energy Helpline). Are encouraging me to move away from one of the best deals in the market because they have assumed my deal will come to an end in the next 12 months. The option to calculate my saving based on my existing spend, although mentioned in the Energy Helpline FAQ as "an option selected by the user in the result table" does not exist. Not all of us wait until we are out of contract to use these websites, this practice generates unnecessary customer movement within the market but more importantly it generates revenue for all the comparison websites. Most tariffs come to an end within 12 months so you probably cannot now believe some comparison websites (Compare, Energy Helpline, USwitch). MSE, Confused and Money Supermarket currently do not use these practices (all data coming from Energy Decision Tech Limited).

Telegraph_Sam

I think that what you say illustrates precisely the conclusions I came to originally. The "savings" claimed by various comparison web sites, even when they agree as to what these amount to, have to be interpreted very carefully indeed since otherwise they can be misleading (in my experience). Much depends on what discounts etc are or are not included. Even if the sites comply with "the rules" for making comparisons I feel that it should be made much more abundantly clear, where applicable, that the claimed savings apply ONLY in a "lethargy scenario" = where the consumer deliberately or otherwise elects to go onto the standard variable tariff when this kicks in. The fact that the consumer is using a comparison site in the first place makes this less than likely.
To me the comparison sites serve a vital purpose in alerting me to what the best deals are on offer at any one time - provided that one takes the actual figures with a pinch of salt subject to doing one's own number crunching before embarking on any switch.

JJ_Egan

I just hope people complain to OFGEM .

Telegraph_Sam

I was alerted by MSE that I could save £50 plus by switching from my present supplier Tonik, whose Go Green (1 year) v3 contract is due to expire shortly.  The saving claimed by switching to top choice Yorkshire Energy was £189 p.a.   I attributed this to the system assuming that I would be switched to the Tonik SV rate, so I artificially extended the current  tariff till end Dec 2020. No great change. So I input instead what would be the default Tonik tariff to change to: Go Green Exclusive v4, terminating 1st March 2021.  Claimed savings £92.  The true savings would however amount to approx half that depending on inputs and assumptions.  So as before I use MSE's engine to point me to the best alternatives for my situation, but (like with other search engines) take the claimed savings with a pinch of salt.