Is it as black & white as going for the first option on the MSE Energy Club?

B0bbyEwing

Caps
Percentages
Guesses.

So much easier (for me) dealing with something like car insurance. That price is £300, that other price is £200, I'll go for the £200 job done move on.

This talk of caps and percentages up, down, sideways & then guesses just baffles me tbh, so I went on the MSE Energy Club site.

Detected I'm currently with Octopus on their Flexible Octopus tariff.

Click view deals, bypass companies I've never heard of before (family member did that & suffered a nightmare so not something I want to try & get in to) and then I land at E.On on their fixed 12M V83 tariff. 
It says I'll save £152 incl. cashback and ESTIMATES I'll pay £117/mo which is less than present.

It feels like a dumb question because the site basically says it's cheaper so should be a better deal & therefore sounds black & white to me but is it really as simple as that with picking the best tariff (note: no electric cars here & certainly no plans for it either)?

What has me doubting myself is people talking of holding off to see what happens between now and whatever point in the future they're talking about. Makes me think well maybe I'm supposed to be waiting or something.

QrizB

You've told the MSE CEC your actual projected energy use (not one of the defaults), and you've checked the details of your current tariff and the new one against the info on the relevant suppliers' websites?

Yes, it's that simple.

Bigphil1474

No, it's not always that simple. You need to look at the unit rates and daily charges. Unless its changed, the projected cost compares what you would pay if you stayed on your current fix/moved to SVR when that ended, against moving to a new fix. It cannot assume that your current fix continues for the same period of your new fix. So you need to do a bit of calculating yourself. I totally agree with avoiding small companies you've never heard of.

debitcardmayhem

Bigphil1474 said:

No, it's not always that simple. You need to look at the unit rates and daily charges. Unless its changed, the projected cost compares what you would pay if you stayed on your current fix/moved to SVR when that ended, against moving to a new fix. It cannot assume that your current fix continues for the same period of your new fix. So you need to do a bit of calculating yourself. I totally agree with avoiding small companies you've never heard of.

Not long ago people had never heard of Octopus nor Tomato , generally some you win ….

B0bbyEwing

Bigphil1474 said:

No, it's not always that simple. You need to look at the unit rates and daily charges. Unless its changed, the projected cost compares what you would pay if you stayed on your current fix/moved to SVR when that ended, against moving to a new fix. It cannot assume that your current fix continues for the same period of your new fix. So you need to do a bit of calculating yourself. I totally agree with avoiding small companies you've never heard of.

Oh I thought that's exactly what it did. For the record I'm not on a fix now, it ended. 

I thought the energy club site ran the new providers tariffs for their duration (say a 12mo fix) and ran my existing tariff for that exact same timeframe based on my annual use figures. 


Also gotta love the ending line of the first response and opening line of the second

molerat

CEC gives the full year cost of the tariff.  It also gives the full year cost of your current tariff and the default cap all based on your declared kWh use. Any change in that use can re-order those comparisons. I tend to do my own spreadsheet with high and low annual use figures based on each tariff and see which gives the better chance of coming out ahead.

bob2302

B0bbyEwing said:

Click view deals, bypass companies I've never heard of before (family member did that & suffered a nightmare so not something I want to try & get in to) 

Personally I wouldn't skip them, unless the saving were negligible; there are plenty of "nightmares" with large companies.  

WiserMiser

B0bbyEwing said:
So much easier (for me) dealing with something like car insurance. That price is £300, that other price is £200, I'll go for the £200 job done move on.

That could all end in tears if you're not comparing like with like, e.g. the cheaper policy might have a higher excess or not pay out if your keys are stolen.  Even worse, you might be prosecuted if you were driving someone else's vehicle but subsequently found you weren't covered.

A reasonable compromise is to identify the top three or four providers and drill down to see precisely what they are offering.  In particular, see where a lower excess starts to increase the premium; no point in having a £1000 excess if the premium is the same as for a £400 excess.

You also need to try more than one comparison site because some deals are only available from certain sites (and some can only be obtained directly from the insurer). 

B0bbyEwing

Would one of you be willing to walk me through what I should be doing then with this? Since what I'm doing is seemingly wrong.
And to be clear I'll tell you exactly what I'm doing & also the exact numbers I'm using...

* Go on to the MSE Cheap Energy Club site
* Stick in details ......
Electricity Est Usage: 3189 kWh/yr
Gas Est Usage: 6390 kWh/year .............. these numbers pulled from my Octopus account.
Octopus Tariff: Flexible Octopus (Price Capped Tariff) ............ NOT FIXED.

Electricity Unit Rate: 26.65p / kWh
Electricity Standing Charge: 47.89p /day

Gas Unit Rate: 6.31p / kWh
Gas Standing Charge: 28.96p /day

* I click on view deals

* I then get the list....



So in my mind if I want the cheapest of the cheap option, I would select Home Energy & go with them thinking it'll save me about £214 a year, thinking that if I use the above kWh figures I gave with Octopus & if I used those same figures with Home Energy then I'd be paying that much less with Home Energy which means go with H.E. to save money, black & white.

But you guys are telling me this isn't so, which baffles me.

So what actually is the case then? So that I can use whatever you tell me to hopefully avoid asking this in 12 months time & do it myself.


As it is, I've never heard of Home Energy so I'd actually scroll down & go with E.On which says I'd save £152 a year but the same thing applies - it says I'm saving so I must be saving.
Except seemingly not....???

spot1034

B0bbyEwing said:

Would one of you be willing to walk me through what I should be doing then with this? Since what I'm doing is seemingly wrong.
And to be clear I'll tell you exactly what I'm doing & also the exact numbers I'm using...

* Go on to the MSE Cheap Energy Club site
* Stick in details ......
Electricity Est Usage: 3189 kWh/yr
Gas Est Usage: 6390 kWh/year .............. these numbers pulled from my Octopus account.
Octopus Tariff: Flexible Octopus (Price Capped Tariff) ............ NOT FIXED.

Electricity Unit Rate: 26.65p / kWh
Electricity Standing Charge: 47.89p /day

Gas Unit Rate: 6.31p / kWh
Gas Standing Charge: 28.96p /day

* I click on view deals

* I then get the list....



So in my mind if I want the cheapest of the cheap option, I would select Home Energy & go with them thinking it'll save me about £214 a year, thinking that if I use the above kWh figures I gave with Octopus & if I used those same figures with Home Energy then I'd be paying that much less with Home Energy which means go with H.E. to save money, black & white.

But you guys are telling me this isn't so, which baffles me.

So what actually is the case then? So that I can use whatever you tell me to hopefully avoid asking this in 12 months time & do it myself.


As it is, I've never heard of Home Energy so I'd actually scroll down & go with E.On which says I'd save £152 a year but the same thing applies - it says I'm saving so I must be saving.
Except seemingly not....???

The Home Energy quote is for a variable tariff (the others are fixed) which means the prices you pay are likely to rise next month with the price cap. If you're looking for a fix, the first thing you need to do is filter out all the variable tariffs. 

B0bbyEwing

spot1034 said:

B0bbyEwing said:

Would one of you be willing to walk me through what I should be doing then with this? Since what I'm doing is seemingly wrong.
And to be clear I'll tell you exactly what I'm doing & also the exact numbers I'm using...

* Go on to the MSE Cheap Energy Club site
* Stick in details ......
Electricity Est Usage: 3189 kWh/yr
Gas Est Usage: 6390 kWh/year .............. these numbers pulled from my Octopus account.
Octopus Tariff: Flexible Octopus (Price Capped Tariff) ............ NOT FIXED.

Electricity Unit Rate: 26.65p / kWh
Electricity Standing Charge: 47.89p /day

Gas Unit Rate: 6.31p / kWh
Gas Standing Charge: 28.96p /day

* I click on view deals

* I then get the list....



So in my mind if I want the cheapest of the cheap option, I would select Home Energy & go with them thinking it'll save me about £214 a year, thinking that if I use the above kWh figures I gave with Octopus & if I used those same figures with Home Energy then I'd be paying that much less with Home Energy which means go with H.E. to save money, black & white.

But you guys are telling me this isn't so, which baffles me.

So what actually is the case then? So that I can use whatever you tell me to hopefully avoid asking this in 12 months time & do it myself.


As it is, I've never heard of Home Energy so I'd actually scroll down & go with E.On which says I'd save £152 a year but the same thing applies - it says I'm saving so I must be saving.
Except seemingly not....???

The Home Energy quote is for a variable tariff (the others are fixed) which means the prices you pay are likely to rise next month with the price cap. If you're looking for a fix, the first thing you need to do is filter out all the variable tariffs. 

Oops sorry yes, was in a rush this morning on limited time. 

The approach still applies though. Filter it so it's fixed only & pick the one at the top for the cheapest or scroll down and pick the first option from the company I've heard of. 

But this is seemingly wrong. 

And as I'm obviously not getting it, what I'm asking is if someone could show me (hence why I provided my own numbers) what I should be doing instead of what I am doing. 

That way when I'm in this situation next year I hopefully won't have to ask the same.