British Gas Price Protection V4 tariff - Is it a good deal?

c-m

My mum received a British Gas 'Exclusive' email recently offering a fixed tariff. 

Current bills for 2,970.50KWh:

Electricity: £1003.4 Standing charge:  48.127p per day Unit rate: 27.865p per kWh

The offer is:

Electricity: £2062.11 Standing charge:  30.319p per day Unit rate: 65.694p per kWh

She's unsure whether to switch to it or not. A week or two when we were looking around there were no offers. Now all of a sudden British Gas want to offer this, makes me think other suppliers are going to start offering new tariffs too, and perhaps the expected cap/increases over the next year aren't going to be as bad as predicted. I would assume that British Gas have some analysts forecasting this stuff, and will have been privy to talks with the government. 

Noticed a few others have been contacted by British Gas also. Each with completely different figures for standing charge and unit rate, despite the name of the tariff being the same. 

EDIT: It seems this is now moot. The email arrived yesterday, but less than 24 hours later the offer isn't available anymore 

Astria

The official cap will be announced next Friday, so if you are on the edge you could always take the deal now and cancel it if the cap comes significantly cheaper as you'll have 14 days cooling off period.

pochase

A tariff offer will only be the same if the people it is offered two live in the same (energy) region.

Different regions have different standing charges and unit rates.

Predictions are still going up, not down, but getting less and less reliable the longer away they are.

The offered unit rate is what Cornwall Insights was expecting from January in their latest prediction 8th of August. It is also more or less their highest figure for 2023 at this moment. 

So a fix will be more expensive until January, and thereafter there is no real savings if you believe CI.

Auxilione is currently predicting a unit rate of 90p per KWh, but as I said it is a lot of guessing for something that far away. In April the guesses for the October cap were still £2500 to £2600.

Personally I would not gamble on this and would not take the fixed rate, but this is my personal opinion. 

jimjames

65p for electric doesn't sound a good deal but we'll know soon enough

Paul_80

We got a similar offer last week. I did some rough calculations, using the fixed rate, the predicted price increases for the variable rate, and our usage. It would be about £50 cheaper to switch, and that £50 difference would be made in September next year, in the last month of the fixed rate.

xzibit

The trouble is it’s hard to calculate as it’s all predictions. On Friday we should find out the cap for October but the predictions for Jan 23, Apr 23 and Jul 23 could double or half between then and now. So you could save £50 by fixing, you could save £500 by fixing, you could lose by fixing. 

pochase

Problem with the 3 months new cap is that it is no longer enough to have an idea what you user in summer and winter. You now need much more detailed knowledge what you usage pattern is for each month to be able to do a valid comparison and to calculate savings or losses.