Am I being conned with switching ??

DirectDebacle

I-LOV-MONEY wrote: »

We tend to only use the property at weekends.

Going through old bills is quite difficult, because some are based on estimates, and the dates don't always coincide.

I am on standard charge - no standing charges.

Gas = 1403 kwH
Elect = 602 kwH

From what I can see, when you are on a 'no standing charge' tariff, they charge higher for the first percentage of units used (to make up for the NSC !), then you pay a reduced rate. However, on a small useage it makes sense to be on NSC.

Can somebody lend me a calculator please ?!

O.k. You are correct to say most if not all your units will be charged at a higher rate. Bear in mind that the figures you have given for gas are extremely low. I am assuming they are for a year.

Lets say you have your gas with a supplier that charges the first 4572 units at £0.065 incl VAT. 1403 units will cost you £91.19. a year.

Another (or the same) supplier charges £0.0362 per unit and £0.15 per day standing charge. The 1403 units cost you £50.78 and the standing charge is £54.75. Total £105.53. I deliberately chose an expensive rate in the first example because this is what npower roughly charge.npower frequently come out cheapest but they have a very high tier 1 rate compared to others. So you should do much better by choosing a low priced tier 1 rate.

In the second example the high rate is much lower but you have the standing charge which you pay for 365 days of the year, not just when you use the house. 15p per day standing charge is probably about right so if you never used the house it would still cost £54.00 a year for not using any gas. Thats why I said in my earlier reply you would probably be better off not having a standing charge.Finding a tier 1 rate at about 4-4.5p and no standing charge should be achievable and give you an annual gas bill of around £65.00

Do the same sort of excercise for electricity. Your electricity usage is much higher so you won't see the same sort of savings as with the gas. If you didn't know, the average annual consumption per annum for electricity is around 3500kWh and for gas around 21000kWh per annum. You just need to do the sums. As regards standing charge or no standing charge look at it this way. Standing charges are almost always applied at a daily rate. If you used the property every weekend throughout the year that would leave 261 days when you were paying a standing charge and not using it.

I-LOV-MONEY

Thanks for all that DirectDebacle. I will have to sit down and read through it all carefully, however I am a bit tied up at the moment ... waiting for the wife to untie me!:rotfl:

Premier_2

workingboy wrote: »

I was'nt aware I should work out any discounts, where they tell me how much I was to save by switching with either Uswitch or EON.

Sorry I may have misunderstood you.

I thought you meant in the opening post that uSwitch were suggesting you would save £100 by switching to Eon. But when you compared the actual unit rates from Eon to your old supplier, those unit rates were higher than your current supplier. (and you couldn't work out where the £100 saving was to come from)

In your later post, I thought you meant you put your consumption figures directly into the Eon website and that indicated you would save approx £65 compared to what you had calculated based on Eon unit prices. (edit: or perhaps Vs your current supplier)

If I'm wrong I'm sorry. You obviously don't need to do any calculations if you are using the websites alone, but where and how have you obtained the alternative costs to the amount being claimed to be saved?

Mikeyorks

Cardew wrote: »

However for workingboy I genuinely thought from his post that he did not enter kWH!

I would agree. It's very difficult to work out from the OP just what he did enter. Armed solely with the bill from a single quarter ... is simply inviting misleading quotes. As the old adage goes 'crap data in = crap data out'.

But I've equally found recently that even putting accurate Kwh data into the comparison sites .. can produce misleading results. The main problem (Uswitch was the most accurate) is the inability of some of the sites (Energyhelpline being the worst) to allow you to input the existing tariff. I would have thought that 'EON Energy Online V5 SC' for both fuels was pretty straightforward. But Energyhelpline doesn't and returns an error message (corrected in the last couple of days .. I notice, by the addition of a mass of extra tariffs to their EON 'drop down'?)to the effect the Gas tariff is invalid. As it perpetually did for my V1 (Elec) and V4 (Gas) online tariffs when with EDF.

Only safe route once you have the Kwh ... is to get out the calculator and DIY, which I had to resort to - taking care to subtract discounts. Particularly so with EON where they can be as high as 20%

doveman

I'm on EON's EnergyOnline Extra Saver v3 and I note that energyhelpline.com says "An additional promotional discount of 10% is available until at least 2009, which has not been included in the savings figure on the results table.", so you obviously can't make an informed decision based on the results it gives.

I-LOV-MONEY

DirectDebacle wrote: »

Bear in mind that the figures you have given for gas are extremely low. I am assuming they are for a year.

It is a bit complicated. We took over the property at the end of March last year.

I received a bill for a period of time before we owned the property, which was cancelled. Then we had a bill marked 'Final Bill' for 6/4/07 to 26/4/07 where we owned the property. However, I have a note to say the bill was cancelled ! I have checked through my accounts and I didn't pay it.

The next bill was from 26/4 till 5/7 but it was an estimated reading. From what I can see I telephoned them and set up a DD of £2 per month ! The latest bill tells me that I owe them £62 which as I am paying DD they are carrying forward to the next payment! (better the money in my account than theirs !). This bill has the only proper reading (by myself, because the meter is in a locked shed), and that was 2471.92 kWh.

I do have a record of the units on the meter on 5 May 2007, which was 2398.6 and on 4 May 2008 it was 2494.4 They do give a very complicated formula for converting units to kWh, but I think like the tariffs they don't expect anybody to understand it !

workingboy

Going back to the beginng.

I used Uswitch for a comparison.

I used my last quarterly bill, (as one of the choices available as I don't know my actual annual usage.)

It showed with Uswitch and EON sites that I could have a saving based on those figures alone.

when the new details arrived from EON the actual tariffs Units/Kwh are higher than my present supplier.

Both offer the same discounts for direct debits etc.

So calculating the usage of my last quarter with the new proposed tariffs, my quarterly bill will be higher.

So from that as I said earlier.

Have I/we been conned, using these comparison sites where they say is a saving and there is not if you check your figures and not take for granted when they say there is a saving.

Today I'm cancelling EON via phone unless they can adjust the tariffs.

We shall see.

Cardew

workingboy wrote: »

I used Uswitch for a comparison.

I used my last quarterly bill, (as one of the choices available as I don't know my actual annual usage.)

This makes the points made earlier perfectly!

Using the 'last quarterly bill' option only allows you to enter the amount you paid in ££££s

1. A quarterly bill can be based,(and often is) on an estimated meter reading at the start or end of the quarter. So for that reason alone is meaningless.

2. It asks for the month the quarterly bill was received, and type of property.
On that 'mass' of data!! it makes a guess of usage pattern, type of insulation. number of people in the house etc etc. for a whole year.

Given that the comparison site's sole objective is to get you to change supplier(and thus get their commission) that gives them licence to 'estimate' savings in almost any way, and in favour of any company, they wish.

As I understand the OP, the results he got showed that moving to a capped tariff would result in an annual saving of £100.

Of course he should have compared in detail the tariff they suggested with his own(kWh price, discounts, etc) before he switched; and not as he has done when he got full details.

However the comparison sites are used by people who often don't understand the finer points of Utility bills or the objectives of the Comparison websites! and accept the results.

Look at the scores of posts on MSE that start:

Using ' www.thereisoneborneveryminute.com I found I could switch and reduce my DD from £xxx an month to £yy and save a huge £zz a month - now after only 3 months they want more than I was paying before'

Premier_2

The savings offered by the websites are based over a year. Cardew has given a lot of good advice including, e.g. why a years consumption is not 4x a quarterly consumption and how sites 'estimate' yearly usage based on info provided - these estimates can vary in the way they are calculated from site to site.

Perhaps I can ask a few more questions

workingboy wrote: »

Going back to the beginng.

I used Uswitch for a comparison.

I used my last quarterly bill, (as one of the choices available as I don't know my actual annual usage.)

How did you use this bill exactly?
Does the bill contain actual readings (not estimates)
Did you use these readings to input kwh in the sites? (you can't do this simply by x4)
Or did you use the cost only?
How was the cost calculated on the bill? Actual amount consumed or 3 x monthly payment?

workingboy wrote:

It showed with Uswitch and EON sites that I could have a saving based on those figures alone.

when the new details arrived from EON the actual tariffs Units/Kwh are higher than my present supplier.

uSwitch states the unit costs for each tariff. Click on the offer and see if the Eon ones on uSwitch agree with the unit costs you received direct from Eon

Also check the unit costs of your existing supplier on uSwitch with the unit costs on the bill. Are they the same? If uSwitch is quoting higher unit cost figures, check with your existing supplier what the true unit costs actually are. There may have been a price increase since your last bill or maybe you have incorrectly advised uSwitch of the actual tariff you are on with your current supplier.

workingboy wrote:

Both offer the same discounts for direct debits etc.

Are you certain? It's rare to find 2 suppliers offering exactly the same discounts.
Anyway, as you said before, you don't need to worry about these unless you are doing the calculation yourself. I thought you were using the websites?

workingboy wrote:

So calculating the usage of my last quarter with the new proposed tariffs, my quarterly bill will be higher.

Now I'm confused.
What exactly are you 'calculating'?
You put figures into uSwitch website that should give you an estimated cost of your current supplier and eon, eon being £100 per year cheaper
Did you also put the similar figures into the eon website that assumed you would save £65 per year (the difference in the 2 could be due to the way they have each used the figures you have supplied to estimate the total years figures, or perhaps uSwitch can offer you a better rate with eon than you going direct)
Are you trying to compare this to your last quarterly bill amount?
(you can't do this simplky by multiplying by 4, and are you sure the last quarterly bill is calculated using the current unit prices?)

workingboy wrote:

So from that as I said earlier.

Have I/we been conned, using these comparison sites where they say is a saving and there is not if you check your figures and not take for granted when they say there is a saving.

Today I'm cancelling EON via phone unless they can adjust the tariffs.

We shall see.

I don't think eon will give you a unique tariff! And I'm not sure you know at present what exactly you want eon to provide you with.

I do however believe that if you are not happy, you should cancel the eon contract whilst you have a chance during the cooling off period and then start again, perhaps requesting assistance here where you are unsure.

workingboy

I'm closing on this as its going on and on.

My present supplier's Tariff for Gas is 3.62p/Kwh and EON wants 4.66p/Kwh.

Electric currently on Eco7, Day @ 12.33p/unit, Night @ 5.64p/unit.

Eon wants 21.88p/Kwh for the first 225 Kwhs, then @ 12.88p/Kwh for day and for all-night @ 5.06p/Kwh.

Anyway I've closed the switch.