Possible daft question - are all variable tariffs now the same?

[Deleted User]

t0rt0ise said:

I just moved to Octopus. It took two days from asking to it being completed. Super quick. I believe the 50 pound discount somebody mentioned is only for those who were customers at a certain date in the past, so the price is essentially at the cap.

I think they offer it after you've been with them for a certain number of months - 10 maybe?

Spoonie_Turtle

t0rt0ise said:

I just moved to Octopus. It took two days from asking to it being completed. Super quick. I believe the 50 pound discount somebody mentioned is only for those who were customers at a certain date in the past, so the price is essentially at the cap.

I don't know if they're still doing it (it was described as temporary), but when it was introduced the Loyal Octopus £50 electricity discount was for people who had been on Flexible Octopus for at least 8 months.
https://octopus.energy/blog/why-we-are-increasing-energy-prices-for-some-customers/

Nebulous2

The cost for an average user should work out the same across providers, but the means of getting there will vary. 

As none of us will be average users it might be worth a bit of time working out your usage and checking tariffs available. 

A low user would be best with a lower standing charge and slightly higher unit cost, while a high user will be the opposite. 

northernsparky

t0rt0ise said:

I just moved to Octopus. It took two days from asking to it being completed. Super quick. I believe the 50 pound discount somebody mentioned is only for those who were customers at a certain date in the past, so the price is essentially at the cap.

Or are you thinking about the “refer your friends”  scheme where you split £100 with a friend who signs up ?  With a referral code

[Deleted User]

Nebulous2 said:

The cost for an average user should work out the same across providers, but the means of getting there will vary. 

As none of us will be average users it might be worth a bit of time working out your usage and checking tariffs available. 

A low user would be best with a lower standing charge and slightly higher unit cost, while a high user will be the opposite. 

Except both unit charge and standing charge are capped, so nobody can do a "slightly higher" anything and there won't be those differences.

double_dutchy

Except both unit charge and standing charge are capped, so nobody can do a "slightly higher" anything and there won't be those differences.

Hello SparkyGrad

This has been discussed in other threads here. As you know the amount charged for zero Kwh is capped and the amount paid for 12,000 Kwh (Gas)/ 2,900 Kwh (Electric) is also capped, so this gives providers a small amount of leeway, e.g. if they have a zero standing charge they can make the per unit cost slightly higher without breaking either cap.

I believe that Outfox the Market had a tariff like this.

[Deleted User]

double_dutchy said:

Except both unit charge and standing charge are capped, so nobody can do a "slightly higher" anything and there won't be those differences.

Hello SparkyGrad

This has been discussed in other threads here. As you know the amount charged for zero Kwh is capped and the amount paid for 12,000 Kwh (Gas)/ 2,900 Kwh (Electric) is also capped, so this gives providers a small amount of leeway, e.g. if they have a zero standing charge they can make the per unit cost slightly higher without breaking either cap.

I believe that Outfox the Market had a tariff like this.

It has been discussed, and we actually weren't sure that the OftM tariff actually complied with the detailed description of how to apply the cap.

As far as those discussions went, we determined that no other suppliers were doing it, and some had stopped doing tariffs like that when the price caps were brought in, which wouldn't suggest they're all suddenly going to restart.

double_dutchy

OK, thanks for that clarification.

It begs the question, why do Ofgem frame the cap the way they do? They could quite easily explicitly rule out any other interpretation if they specified a higher amount (for 2,900 Electric/12,000 Gas) that was without standing charge (i.e. an absolute cap on the unit rate)?

[Deleted User]

We couldn't work out whether the cap was effectively two caps - one at 0kWh and one at typical kWh - or whether it was a continuous line of caps plotted joining those two points and continuing ad-infinitum (the cap as an equation not two points).

In the first case, the situation you describe is true and the zero standing charge tariff is ok.

In the second case, if a lower SC and higher UC was chosen, any user above the typical would have a cost above that continuous line (as the cost's gradient would be steeper from the higher UC), and the cap would therefore be broken.

The OFGEM data for calculating the cap values is a complex equation, which could suggest that the second case is true, but we were unclear as to whether there was a similar equation for applying the caps.

To be honest, I agree with you and think the first case is more immediately intuitive likely, we just couldn't find anything to prove it  but zero standing charge tariffs were vanishing (when they would seem an obvious way to keep low-usage accounts). (edit: deleted following confirmation in post below.)

superkoopauk

Deleted_User - It is the second scenario - see my post here

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/79443983#Comment_79443983