Standard variable price cap better than switching offers

Cheryl_Williams

Hi my EDF Simply fixed tariff ends April 30th. I have entered my annual consumption on comparison sites and best deal shows annual estimated cost of £1296 per year. This is higher than price cap for April 2019 which is £1254. Would I be better off just going to standard variable and relying on price cap. How exactly does cap work?

Quentin

The price cap isn't £1254

It's a cap on the cost per unit/daily standing charge

AndyPK

So, no. You are much better off going for a fix for ~ 1 year.


uswitch was doing a good exclusive EDF offer. Very quick switch over if you are an existing customer

[Deleted User]

The cap is adjusted every 6 months and I think April the 1st is one of the cap adjustment dates.. Recently the prepay tariffs have been comparing very well with the best 1 year fixes. I m with Bulb on their Varifair tariff, one of the cheapest in the UK for my area and their current prepay rates are slightly lower than mine for both gas and electric.
The advice that a one year fix always beats prepayment meters has nt been correct the last couple of years

matelodave

Please dont get confused about the price cap. It just caps the tariff, not the overall price, so if you use more you'll pay more and use less you'll pay less.

Unfortunately the way it has been portrayed has confused many people and in a lot of cases it's cost them more than they were otherwise paying. Some did see a small drop in their bills (approx £70 on average)when it was first introduced but that decrease will be overtaken by the 1st April increase (approx £120) and the virtually guaranteed increase that's in the pipeline for 1st October.

You will be much better off finding another tariff rather than just going onto the SVT but do your own sums very carefully, based on your own kwh consumption figures.

jcontest

As others have said, sadly it's not a total price cap. It's a cap on what someone with the average consumption would pay.


The move is only really good in that it stops non-switching people from getting milked to death. The bigger problem to me is that it will largely benefit the huge providers the most. Small providers will have a hard time loss-leading to grow their customer base, and on top of that the large providers are more likely to hold onto customers because they think that they aren't going to save much "as their bill is capped".


I highly object to people who say they can save me xxx amount of money on my shopping, broadband, and energy. It's as misleading/confusing as saying your energy price is now capped.