Autoswitch - V- A good dea

Yozza

It seems silly to move to Autoswitch when I have been happy with my contract with Avro which is about to terminate and  Avro's new offer is,in fact,slightly cheaper. However,I am becoming fed up with having to re-new my contract every year so am tempted by Autoswitch. However,can I be certain that I will always be on the best deal. The Energy Club have just told me I am paying too much when,in fact, I have been and will continue to pay substantially less than the Club think I am paying.

Gerry1

It's not a good idea because your account is only reviewed once per year and the CEC doesn't cover all suppliers, despite all its claims to do so.  You can do better yourself.

It's not difficult to compare a few times per year to find the cheapest suppliers, usually separate rather than dual fuel.

Start with Citizens Advice and 'Switch with Which?'.

Yozza

Hi, My post happened to coincide with Martin's official launch which literally came out after I had just posted and it still looks good to me so what I will probably do is stick with Avro this year and see how Autoswitch goes but if it turns out to be as good as it looks I will move over. One of the reasons I became fed up of looking for switching deals was because I spent six months of the year in the US with my family and usually came back to having to sort out energy deals etc. However,the situation has changed for all of us now so a year taking stock with travel virtually off the menu might be a good idea. Many thanks for your comments,  Best wishes and stay safe,Yozza

richardw

This is moneysavingexpert/supermarket’s response to look after my bills. If you want a good deal and a bit of Cashback through Quidco or topcashback, best diy.

UnclaimedEnergy

The MSE auto-switcher looks a lot better flushed out, however does only do it annually and doesn't include suppliers who aren't signed up to direct switching (Green, Outfox etc.). So you're unlikely to ever get the best deal (Currently they're pushing the pure planet fixed tariff)

Even with an autoswitcher you should ideally take physical readings for every switch, which doesn't solve the issue of being away in the USA.

dogshome

If you are rich you can probably afford to be lazy, though how you got to be rich whilst being lazy is the real question

.Autoswitch, Lookafter my Bills, BillBuddy etc, are all pushing their snouts into the same trough. Some energy suppliers, but not all, will pay a Bounty for being handed a new customer, just the same as some others will pay pay £x to an individual customer who signs up.

The amount these agencies get paid is kept quiet, but what evidence there is suggests it is around £30 - Not big bucks?

Look after my Bills TV Ads boasts they have 300,000 customers - At £30 a pop this is £9 million pounds, and 12 months later when they move the customers again, it's another £9 million

It was on this site that a Look after my Bills customer complained that the supplier he had been moved to went broke 3 weeks later, leaving him to deal with the Administrators, who themselves were dealing the account books in a financial mess.

These agencies will only move their customers to suppliers who pay them a Bounty, and will ignore the suppliers who don't, any one of which could have a better deal for you in terms of cost and customer service.

If anyone has a sensible answer to the question posed in line one, please feel free to PM me

 

slipperywhenvette

Have been trying to join Autoswitch for the last week. Each time I have got to and pressed the Check for deals button it goes to a page called "Oops  There's a  problem, Try again later. Having tried again this morning with the same result I'm going back to DIY.Being retired I have the time

tempus_fugit

I prefer DIY too as I am quite picky with who I will switch to, amongst other things. Autoswitch doesn’t appeal to me at all and as has already been said, it depends on a lot of factors as to who they are likely to switch you to, it may be cheapest but not necessarily the best.

dreamypuma

I too am a fan of DIY switching. I like to record my energy usage and compare annually with previous years usage & possibly slight adjustments to compensate for any changes in circumstances. (Eg anticipated increase in use this year due to the pandemic

I have a general mistrust of all comparison site, with exception of the CAB site. Particularly as MSE themselves weren't recommending Yorkshire Energy on Cheap Energy Club last year. (Who had reasonably good feedback, and have since proved to be very good)

As mentioned above autoswitchers and most comparison sites have historically offered skewed recommendations, based on kickbacks for sign-ups.

I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) the new MSE switcher is whole of the market. 

If the above is true, then the only other reservation I would have is missing out on higher rates of cashback. Although in the last year I've noticed this too is now becoming less attractive.

GinCo

Bumping this topic back up, to say that I think there may be 'gaming' of the system by suppliers for electricity-only properties with Economy7/storage heating.

I'd become unhappy with Bulb setting a 'minimum' Direct Debit > 30% above by self-set one, for the obvious reason that it meant building up credit for 8-9 months against unpredictable 'winter' usage (with the heating on) despite 'top-up' by credit/debit card being an obvious way to additionally pay if/when necessary. Their pattern of price rise was also narrowing the differential between day/night kWh prices and significantly increasing the poll-tax-style daily standing charge.

So I was nudged into switching by the MSE email about the relative cost of similarly highly customer-rated Igloo, 'DIY via MSE' and realised there was a significant issue in the two companies' tariffs that MSE Energy-Club comparison hadn't captured.

Igloo 'autosets' the in-advance monthly Direct Debit amount, so it should be comparable to Bulb's 'recommended' level (that being what Bulb will want, at least at first). In fact, it was >10% below Bulb's 'minimum' and >40% below their 'recommended' and Igloo pays 3% interest on accrued credit-balance. That seems to result from Bulb's 'projection-algorithm' counting all usage at the 'day' rate, whereas Igloo really has has a single 24/7 price per kWh.

I'm here now because my switch has registered as completed, and Energy Club has just alerted me to a large saving if I switch... to Bulb. This is absolutely not the case for me; I know for a fact that Bulb would milk my current account by much, much more per month and pay me 0% on the extremely high credit-balance that would accrue. It's hard to be sure of the exact 'hidden cost', but if I did nothing else but switch (letting Bulb run the DD amount) I'd be having a credit-balance running into hundreds of pounds just because Bulb will assume that at any given moment I'll start only using electricity outside of the Economy7 hours... but Igloo has incentivised itself to not let credit-balances build up.

There is no way that I'd currently sign up for 'autoswitching', and I think it's worrying that in the current 'market' that service could well be being fooled by the traders (at least for some potential users). A bit like a 'best-price carrot & potatoes auto-buyer' going round the stalls without knowing that produce being 'washed' or 'unwashed' affects the 'true' price/kg.

QrizB

It seems to me that the 50% (or whatever it is now) of customers who have never switched for one reason or another - too busy, too complicated, whatever - would be relatively well served by an competent autoswitching service (even if it isn't a whole-of-market comparison) in that they would actually switch to a cheaper supplier.

The type of people who come to MSE and register an account on the forums and post about switching are probably in the other 50% and are quite comfortable doing their own legwork for the maybe £100/yr that a hand-crafted switch might save vs. an automatic one.