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Well I'm a bit miffed with Powershop. Myself and another forum contributor specifically asked if there was a price increase due and we were assured there wasn't. Someone had posted that they noticed on the app the estimated future bills were approximately 30% higher and so that caused me to check the app and my estimated bills were also 30% higher.

Both of us independently contacted Powershop and asked if a price rise was in the pipeline and both of us were assured there wasn't one due. Now we find there is!!

It is just possible that the front line CS staff were not aware of this impending change but I doubt it.

This coupled with the very poor Future Pack and Special Pack discounts available (worse than last year) means I will be keeping an eye on other suppliers' offers just in case.

My Powershop Pioneers tariff is 15.03p Day, 8.44p Night and 15.76p Daily charge before Powerpack purchases and the Powershop Shopper tariff that can theoretically be achieved by buying Powerpacks is shown as 11.74p Day, 6.59p Night with the daily charge shown as unchanged at 15.76p. In practice the daily charge is reduced in the same proportion to the savings made on the effective Day and Night rates by buying Powerpacks as Powerpack credit is applied to the whole bill.

Now when Powershop describe their new standard tariff as Baseline and then announce it will have 36.12p daily standing charge (before Powerpack discounts are applied) that is a price increase compared to the 15.76p per day daily charge that is my current Powershop Pioneers tariff (before discount.)

That to me is a price increase - a 229% increase on my daily charge!!!

So at present my (undiscounted) annual bill for the daily charge is 15.76p X 365 =£57.52. So, at present £57.52 gets bought with discounted credit in my 'credit Pot' which is filled by buying Powerpacks with various discounts throughout the year. In future it looks like my annual (undiscounted) daily charge will be 36.12p X 365 =£131.83. So I now have to buy £131.83's worth of daily charge each year with my credit pot leaving less discounted credit in my pot to purchase my Day and Night units - effectively a price rise for me - i.e. having to use more of my discounted credit in my 'pot' to buy the daily standing charge thus leaving less credit to buy Day and Night units.

The second subtle way a price increase MAY be experienced is if the availability and discount offered for Powerpacks becomes less generous. We have already seen Future Packs offered with lower % discount than the equivalent month last year and also a reduction in the number of Future Packs that can be purchased.

This is a very subtle form of price rise - restricting the level of discount available and thus the amount of discounted credit (energy) that can be pre-purchased as a consequence.

Recent evidence shows Powerpacks seem to now be less generous in the discount they offer and there are reduced opportunities to buy Powerpacks with the greatest discounts (i.e. recently the number of Future Packs that can be bought has been reduced compared to previous occasions last year.)

Is this pattern going to continue as the Future Packs for the winter months become available? What will the discount on the September Future Packs be and how many will we be able to buy this year?

This will be a key indicator of Powershop's underlying pricing strategy. Last year September Future packs were 13.6% discount and you could buy five of them. Let's see what happens on 1st May.:D

That's my take on things - we shall see.

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