Don't Switch Now Becomes SWITCH NOW!

Katgoddess

johnnnn wrote:

Martin's advice seems to be that 'don't switch' will apply for possibly a couple of months - bearing in mind it takes 6 weeks to switch, it would be mid January before I would be with a new supplier, having spent some of the coldest months with a high price setup. Should I switch now and recalculate later?

We are also in the same boat, as we currently have BG duel fuel.

Would it be worth switching now, and switching again later?

MSE_Martin

Update Note 3 October

Scottish Power has today announced price rises, substantial ones, so i think more are to come and this don't switch stance is working

pricefighter

Telecom Plus have also put up prices by an average of 20%.

Gambler

MSE_Martin wrote:

Update Note 3 October

Scottish Power has today announced price rises, substantial ones, so i think more are to come and this don't switch stance is working

Am I too late to go for their capped offer now?
Just checked, yes I am. I knew I should have done it last week.

Marigold123

Had an interesting thought. I know it's 'Don't switch now', but isn't that mainly because of the inconvenience of switching to a company you think is cheaper and then finding you have to switch again? (And of course it'll take several weeks before you're actually switched over and you can re-switch.)

But can you get money for switching (from the switching websites - U-Switch, etc) EACH time you switch? If you've got several similarly priced companies and you switch every time your latest company puts its prices up, couldn't you actually benefit from the next few months' confusion instead?

Haven't checked out the various T&Cs yet, but at a minimum you could surely do it once for each switching site, (as well as taking advantage of other offers, Nectar points, rpoints or ipoints - whichever is your bag).

Perhaps we should be saying instead, "The prices are going to be going mad over the next few months, so if you've got the stamina, (or possibly no life! ) you could actually take advantage of the uncertainty and make a few quid."

We could call it the 'Utilities Shuffle'.

I'm quite prepared to be shot down if this is a terrible idea, so hit me with your objections.

---

Edit:

Thought of one already. Re-reading Martin's last post, I'm guessing he's hoping that consumer pressure will force the utility companies to show their hand and increase their prices sooner rather than later. If enough people followed the 'take the money and run' strategy, it might prevent that happening so early. Which could be a good or bad thing, depending on your viewpoint - you might want your cheap fuel provider to keep their prices down as long as possible - not an unreasonable wish!

martint123

Oh tizwaz.... I got the price increase notice from StayWarm a week or so ago and dithered because of the "don't change" warning. Now the supplier I was going to change to has shot up by over £100 a year, throwing all my calculations out of thw window. Scottish Power (capped).

Martin (wishing I'd never read this thread).

Gambler

martint123 wrote:

Oh tizwaz.... I got the price increase notice from StayWarm a week or so ago and dithered because of the "don't change" warning. Now the supplier I was going to change to has shot up by over £100 a year, throwing all my calculations out of thw window. Scottish Power (capped).

Martin (wishing I'd never read this thread).

same here, I was all set to change to scottish power capped but waited after reading Martin's email. Now it would cost me more than BG.

Marigold123

I'd be interested to hear Martin's response to these comments. Is there a grand plan here, or do you think it was a mistake for people not to switch?

martint123

It was certainly a mistake for me - £100 for the first year at least.

Gambler

martint123 wrote:

It was certainly a mistake for me - £100 for the first year at least.

Do you think SP capped is still worth a look though, no increases till Oct 2007. It's time consuming enough thinking about this change, don't really wanna be changing every 6 months !!