How often can you switch - I use zero gas for six months of the year.

richardhall

Hello all,
We use gas for our central heating and nothing else hence our usage profile varies markedly between the winter and the summer.

Might we be better off using a supplier who has a higher standing charge and lower usage charge in the winter, and then switching to a supplier who has a lower standing but higher usage charge in the summer?

I don't have exact usage figures to hand (except for April to October when it's zero!) but could dig them out and put them into a comparrison sight if you htink it's a good idea.

Thanks in advance,
Rich

Premier_2

You might do, but I doubt any saving would be much.

I haven't looked at unit price variances between standing charge & non-standing charge prices for a long time, but when non-standing charge tariffs were initially introduced many years ago, all the utility suppliers did was to include the standing charge within the tier1 unit charges anyway (infact I think that was how tier1 & tier2 charges came about as I don't remember them beforehand.)

e.g. rather than charge you a standing charge, they would spread that charge over the initial units, with the remaining units charged at the orginal standing charge unit rate.
This meant that anyone using less than the tier1 qty of units would infact save a proportion of the standing charge whilst anyone using more than that qty would not see any change in the overall bill
(which begged the question why anyone would stay on standing rate tariffs)

The reason non-standing charge tariffs were introduced was that low users (and therefore often low income households) often paid a a huge proportion of their bill in standing charges that they could do nothing to economise on.

If you are happy to continually switch suppliers every 6 months, you would probably make more money by selecting those who offer the biggest bribe (either through the switching site or other cashback site) to join rather than deciding purely on standing charge/non standing charge.

But you might be better off just choosing the cheapest tariff and sticking to it.

Farway

You could look at Ebico for gas, depends on your winter use of course, but they do not have standing charge or tiered rates

I use them for gas, similar situation to you

DirectDebacle

Avoid npower at all costs. They 'sculpt' their tier 1 units in a way that means from November to March inclusive you would pay for 3799 of the 4572 annual high rate units. Their high rate is also way above any other suppliers high rate. This is designed to 'suck' in low users such as you. The sculpting cannot be factored in to a comparison site and npower usually come out cheapest. I can asure you that for you, they won't be. There is a whole thread on this which may be of interest.http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=822299