Comparing the comparison services discussion

legin_2

Read your note on changing suppliers now that most of price increases in but must disagree since the comparison site still showing BASICPOWER as the cheapest, however they have now notified me of 30% increase for Electricity which makes them more expensive than other suppliers. The comparion web-sites need to add a note about when the suppliers last increased prices otherwise the info is useless.

lindy8

Powergen Con!!
Having just done price comparisions for gas and electricity, Powergen came out best for me. They also seemed to be offering £30 cashback plus £200 of discount vouchers towards the cost of home insulation. As I need new insulation and already had a price from British Gas for the work, this seemed like a good deal. After being passed to several operators at Powergen, I found out that the vouchers they say they are offering, do not exisit. The £200 discount they say is reflected in the fact that their prices are £200 cheaper than anyone elses. So I asked them to quote and guess what - they were exactly the same price as British Gas. I told the operator that this was an outrageous con and she agreed and said they had had many complaints! Anything you can do Martin?

loon_2

the insulation offer does exist. If you contact the POwergen Energy Efficiency team on 0500 021000, they should be able to give you more info.

lindy8

the insulation offer does exist. If you contact the POwergen Energy Efficiency team on 0500 021000, they should be able to give you more info.

They are the ones who confirmed that it does not exist!!

Sonic314

Took me a while to get round to checking out the comparison sites. After finally getting my annual consumption from Scottish Power for my gas (1550) and electricity (3047) I thought I'd have a look around.
I tried uswitch, saveonyourbills, ukpower, switchandgive and energyhelpline. all basically came out with either London Energy, Seaboard Energy or SWEB Online. However, the savings they stated were dramatically different despite inputting the same information. Went from saving £160 with uswitch to £60-70 with saveonyourbills. Don't quite know why the discrepancy!
Anyway my query is this: after checking out London Energy's ratings on one of the sites it stated customers may be better off with Scottish Power and that it isn't the best company to deal with.
Was basically wondering what people's thoughts were.

chateau42

Comparison sites? yes , quite helpful!!! ;D ;D ;D But NO comparison with your own actual annual consumption  X cost per Kw from whoever. Try the cheapest first, always a good start. Reality. ::) ::) My taxed income!!!!!!!!!!!! Why rely on con tricks, estimates, salesmen, capped cons etc.!!!!!!!!!

bchookang

After reading lots about utility switching, I finally got round to checking it out. Using several of the comparison sites, they all seemed to put London Energy as top for me producing an estimated £220 saving on my current Gas/Electricity suppliers (BG and Scottish Gas). But when I use the saving calculator on London Energy's website the estimated saving was about £100 less! Further investigation found that the price quoted on the comparison sites for London Energy's electricity was 8.600p/kWh for the first 225 kWh per quarter, and 6.040p thereafter, whereas London Energy says that it is 12.40p and 7p respectively. So there may be major discrepancies!

But although the predicted saving was lower, it is still a saving and LE still seems to be the best deal for me so I'll probably go with them.

Has anyone else had similar experiences, or ideas why the comparison sites are different from the actual company's figures?

loon_2

EDF (london, sweb and seeboard) and SSE (hydro, southern, swalec and atlantic) did not raise there prices at the same time as its competitors. they have planned increases for the beginning of the new year, which just happens to coincide with end of npower's and powergens capped price.

you'll find that the above will probably be offering capped prices in the new year, and using this as a selling point.

Iffy_Wallet

I do have to say that many of the energy comparison websites come up with similar, if not the same results (particulary the energy watch compliant sites).

I have noticed that when you visit the supplier websites, it is sometimes very difficult to get an accurate picture of what is going on. Also, when you track down the figures and perform calculations, the conclusions do not always look similar to the comparison websites.

I would mention Scottish Power, as being favourably suggested, but where actual figures do not necessarily bear this out. I will avoid further mention of this company, until I have repeated some calculations. :-X

With regard to Utilita being suggested to me as a great solution, with Get180, I am currently struggling to make calculations match their expectations.

In terms of Utilita, how can they possibly know how many kWh electricity you use in a day? I don't think that they read the meter that often !

At this point, can I ask any of the technical staff from the comparison websites, if they have major problems gathering and using information from the energy providers. Do the providers send you an email or letter everytime they increase the prices, or do you have to remain ever vigilant against their changes? Do you find their pricing structures and tactics as being convoluted? ::)

I appreciate that running a comparison website can't be all that easy. But it might not hurt for us to have a bit of background, perhaps?

Any opinions ?

Iffy_Wallet

Actually, I am having a few problems trying to do some sums this morning.

Energylinx mentions savings via: get180, get130, and get80.

Utilita talks about get80, get180 and get280.

Now I am scratching my head. ???