Best use of comparison sites!

beer_tins

Hi all, I have a flat with no gas and an economy 7 electricity tariff. I just started the switch to npower from Altantic from yesterday and have a good bit of advice for using uswitch etc. The first time I compared, I used my monthly payment for comparison purposes, Scottish Power came up best. Then, I went through old readings and worked out my on and off peak usage over the last 12 months and found that npower is the best. This is because I use 4 times as much off peak electricity as on peak (yes, really!) so am not a typical user.

Moral of the story, whenever you do a price comparison for somewhere you have been living a while, use all of your readings (gas, on peak and off peak elec.) from the last 12 months, rather than the amount you pay, which will simply guess it for you. That should ensure you get the cheapest rate for your actual usage.

On top of that, I then signed up to npower via quidco rather than uswitch to earn myself an extra tenner. A bit naughty after using uswitch to compare prices, I know, but £20 is £20!

Ken68

What about the 'sculpting' beinerts...that would worry me.
It is nPower that are naughty, won't be long before they bring in special high rates for when it's cold.

beer_tins

Well, I'm not to worried as I'm on an economy 7 tariff. I use about 1900 peak units and 8000 off peak units a year. The off peak price is fixed, so they can't do any sculpting there. I don't believe they do this for peak units on economy 7 tariffs, and I don't think it'll make too much difference on the overall price in my case if they do this.

It was more a general "how to", but you have a point, you need to take account of companys that are known to do this...