Uswitch miscalculation?

Talldave

As part of having a renewed look at what consumption I'd have to maintain at night to make an E7 electricity tariff work, I fed some figures into uSwitch, but I'm getting a very weird result for Bristol Energy that just seems plain wrong. I emailed uSwitch about it last week but no reply.


Using current tariff, Pure Planet 100% green, South East region, 2844 day / 756 night


They're showing Bristol energy with a £79.17 saving, whereas it's actually £75.98 more.


The next best result is Yorkshire energy, where they have the saving spot on at £64.88.


Bristol Energy Big Issue 2 Year Fix Green is:
Day rate 18.669p per kWh
Night rate 11.267p per kWh
Standing charge 22.81p per day
£11.43 discount


Yorkshire energy Green Weasel - Fixed Until 30th June 2020 is:
Day rate 15.976p per kWh
Night rate 8.718p per kWh
Standing charge 7.35p per day
No discount


Does anyone else get this miscalculation?

Neil_Jones

Normally the issue of phantom savings is caused because the websites default to what you would be paying if a fixed tariff is due to expire this year.

Talldave

Neil_Jones wrote: »

Normally the issue of phantom savings is caused because the websites default to what you would be paying if a fixed tariff is due to expire this year.

Pure Planet's tariff is variable with no announced price changes on the way (sadly!).


And the Yorkshire Energy saving is spot on - well 1p different from my Excel version!


I wondered if they were somehow allocating the discount monthly instead of annually, but that doesn't give the same error.

Pagett

Talldave wrote: »

As part of having a renewed look at what consumption I'd have to maintain at night to make an E7 electricity tariff work, I fed some figures into uSwitch, but I'm getting a very weird result for Bristol Energy that just seems plain wrong. I emailed uSwitch about it last week but no reply.


Using current tariff, Pure Planet 100% green, South East region, 2844 day / 756 night


They're showing Bristol energy with a £79.17 saving, whereas it's actually £75.98 more.


The next best result is Yorkshire energy, where they have the saving spot on at £64.88.


Bristol Energy Big Issue 2 Year Fix Green is:
Day rate 18.669p per kWh
Night rate 11.267p per kWh
Standing charge 22.81p per day
£11.43 discount


Yorkshire energy Green Weasel - Fixed Until 30th June 2020 is:
Day rate 15.976p per kWh
Night rate 8.718p per kWh
Standing charge 7.35p per day
No discount


Does anyone else get this miscalculation?

My guess is that uSwitch have added the unit cost consumption together, but erroneously subtracted (rather than added) the standing charge
... and then ignored the discount entirely (which may actually be £12.00 inc Vat) as that only applies when you agree to online account management.

uSwitch is not one of my favoured comparison sites since it decided not to openly share all the complete details of tariffs it cannot switch you to
... and who wants half a dozen bottles of cheap plonk if they can switch you? Cash is king.

Hence why this is, to a large extent, a guess.

Talldave

Pagett wrote: »

My guess is that uSwitch have added the unit cost consumption together, but erroneously subtracted (rather than added) the standing charge
... and then ignored the discount entirely (which may actually be £12.00 inc Vat) as that only applies when you agree to online account management.

uSwitch is not one of my favoured comparison sites since it decided not to openly share all the complete details of tariffs it cannot switch you to
... and who wants half a dozen bottles of cheap plonk if they can switch you? Cash is king.

Hence why this is, to a large extent, a guess.

Thanks for the guess - you could well be right.


I had no choice but to use them for my recent gas switch as they had an exclusive tariff with SSE with gas at 2.499p. On 60,000kWh that's irresistible.

Talldave

uSwitch have replied to my email stating that they couldn't re-create the problem and asked me to call.

So I 'phoned and talked them through the figures and sure enough they got the same miscalculation.

It turns out they have the night & day rates swapped in their system!


[Edit]: I also notice they've done the same thing for the Zebra 24 Months V2 tariff, got day & night rates reversed. And their savings for Zebra Fixed Rate June 2020 v1 Paperless are also wrong, but it doesn't seem to be a simple rate swap. Hence both those tariffs are showing impossible to achieve savings.