Comparing the comparison services discussion

MSE_Martin

This area relates to the subsiduary article about Gas & Electricity Comparing the comparison services to discuss it please click reply

Important Notes:

General Energy Bill Cutting Discussion: For general discussions about gas & elec prices price instead go here

Utility Warehouse (Telecom Plus): If you are going to discuss Utility Warehouse, please do NOT do it in this area, there is a special area reserved for it, due to past abuses about this subject here

Be Careful. I would like to repeat the caution at the top of every page about defamatory remarks. Many of the Chief Execs of the price comparison companies read these pages. Whilst I am happy for people to criticise the service, please keep the language polite and keep it factual, defamatory comments will be removed.

Yabba_the_HuTT

I have just tried the comparing prices 'search engine' via the Energyhelpline/Cashback link. I found the information it provided utterly bogus.

It stated I could save 44% on my bills with my current supplier (Scottish Power) if I changed to London Energy, and 41% if I changed my existing account for an online account with Scottish Power.

I visited London Energy's website and was promptly told, having entered my details for price comparison, that they were unable to provide me with a better deal than my existing one.

I visited Scottish Power's website and calculated a direct price comparison between my latest quarterly bill and what it would have been if I had been paying for my gas and electricity at the prices advertised: my current bill is 19% cheaper.

You could say that I am not impressed!

MSE_Martin

Cheers Yabba. I have responded to your e-mail and thank you for the further details. I am speaking to Energyhelpline about this to have a look at exactly why this happened.

colonelflop

I used the Energy Helpline for a dual fuel comparison using my last 12 months Kwh total and it estimated a £252 pa saving with Powergen's EnergyOnline tarriff compared to my current supplier British Gas.

I then used Powergen's online calculator and was given exactly the same saving. But, on checking Powergen's figure for its estimate of my present bills, the figure it gave for my annual electricity bill with British Gas was £88 more than I actually paid.  The figure for my gas bill was less than £2 different. So the saving should be about £162 not £252.

I entered the correct payment method, dual fuel savings etc., so why the big difference?

This is still a saving worth switching for, but it makes me wonder if Powergen gives me the highest saving after all!!  ???

energyhelpline_company_representative

From energyhelpline.com,

The reason that there was a difference in the savings predicted between energyhelpline.com and the London Energy website in the first post was that

1. the London Energy website did not list any ScottishPower Capped tariffs while energyhelpline.com did. The user clicked on two different current tariffs to do the comparison (ScottishPower Capped on energyhelpline.com and ScottishPower Standard on London Energy). The user was on Capped.

2. London Energy's website bizarrely does not seem to list their Online tariff while we at energyhelpline.com do. Hence two different tariffs came out at the other end of the equation. An expensive one from London Energy and a cheap one from energyhelpline.com.

Hence the two savings amounts were very different.

Gladly, it was not because energyhelpline.com's calculator was bogus it was because it contains many more tariffs than London Energy's

energyhelpline_company_representative

Dear Col. Flop,

The reason why you have the discrepancy between your billed amount from BG and what the price comparisons are showing you is that your billed is on their old lower rates.

Their new higher rates came into effect on the 23rd Sep hence the calculations on energyhelpline.com and Powergen are using these new higher BG rates to predict your future savings.

Hope this clarifies things.

colonelflop

Thanks for your reply which explains some of the difference. The £88 difference equates to 10% of my billed amount from BG. I didn't think that BG prices had increased by as much as 10% isn't it about 6%? Also how is it that my billed gas amount is almost the same as the calculated amount if this includes the September increases. Very puzzling!

energyhelpline_company_representative

The price rise was 12.4% for gas and 9.4% for electric. Hence 10% is about right. Why there is a discrepany in the gas amount I really not sure. :-/

I expect it is to do with the algorithms / equations each site uses.

The other thing which it could be is that if on energyhelpline.com you click onto a single fuel tab eg. just gas then the comparison will become a single gas comparison stripping out from the new tariff any dual fuel discounts you would get from taking a dual fuel tariff.

You certainly would get a saving however with Powergen Online

Kontiki

I used the Energyhelpline & checked the figures on the Powergen & Scot.Power sites. I also calculated the figures myself in Excel using various amounts of higher / lower usage based over a couple of years bills, I used the Kwh per year rather that the cost to give more realistic figures. In all cases there was a good correlation between the cost savings & differences could be accounted for in rounding up.

Paul_Herring

The Guardian had an article in yesterdays paper:

Are they doing all in their power for you?

I get the impression that they weren't impressed with any of the major comparison services.

loon_2

read the article.... a bit biased though. why do people who cannot obey simple instructions decide to write national articles.

Surely you have to give uswitch some credit, they offer an impartial service for customers who are not in the know, as do most of the other actual EW approved websites. If this chap actually read uswitch, he would have seen that the reason why uswitch did not bring up atlantic is because they only initially display outcomes of 3 star + rating (if you search by price). There is a link stating click here for suppliers regardless of service rating.

I did a similar comparison and found atlantic no problems.

Maybe these journalists should leave it up to the experts.....

what's next.. 'i logged onto mse.com, etc....?'