Utilites - Do you care what provider?

[NotAGolf]

My 12 month contract is up with British Gas so I'm thinking of switching providers. Apart from the initial switch with EDF, British Gas are the only company I've had to deal with. However, after a bit of looking around it looks like I can get cheaper deals elsewhere.

One thing that puts me off other companies is how bad the reviews are. Saying that though, all of the companies I look at get pretty shoddy write ups; British Gas, nPower, EDF, EON, Scottish Power, Southern, etc.

Do you bother looking at the company or do you just go for the cheapest offer?

 

[Glaucus]

Cheapest, reviews tell you nothing. There. All as bad as each other. Unless you get a company like Logitech where everyone sings their praises.

Reviews are always bad, as its only bad experiences that make people take the time to write a review.

The only exception to these is things like eBay which bug you to review.

 

[ptneps]

Cheapest, reviews tell you nothing. There. All as bad as each other. Unless you get a company like Logitech where everyone sings their praises.

Reviews are always bad, as its only bad experiences that make people take the time to write a review.

The only exception to these is things like eBay which bug you to review.

Strange, most of OCUK reviews are positive.

 

[cm1179]

freaky. just watching martin lewis on this morning and he's pedalling his ''lock in now'' speach.

without derailing the thread, just how much can be saved by doing this? he was banding figures of £250+ PA about but i've heard counter arguments for comparison site savings being more like maybe £25 PA

ftr.i don't care who my provider is. i'm with southern electric and went with them because they are cheapest.

 

[Glaucus]

Comparison sites are not good, there's far to many variables. It can say you will save then cost you hundreds more a year. They are fine if you weed out tariffs. That only have one price. But if you see tariffs with first x-units at y price and anything after that units at Z price. Comparison sites fall over and give you utter garbage results.

But yes you can save hundreds.

 

[Zogger]

wouldn't pay attention to the reviews really. I haven't really seen good reviews for any major energy companies. Had an ok (but with flaws) experience with british gas (at least they have a decent enough working website), had some pretty major mistakes from npower and not generally impressed with their customer communication (randomly changed me to the standard tariff mid way through a fix, and I've signed up for meter read reminders three times and never once received a meter read reminder), been generally annoyed by southern for hassling me with marketing, so on a personal level I would probably try to avoid all these companies, but I have no doubt others can be just as bad.

 

[Zogger]

Comparison sites are not good, there's far to many variables. It can say you will save then cost you hundreds more a year. They are fine if you weed out tariffs. That only have one price. But if you see tariffs with first x-units at y price and anything after that units at Z price. Comparison sites fall over and give you utter garbage results.

well they do ask questions to determine how much you use to make this more accurate, and if you have been in place with a routine for a long time you can enter your definite usage figures from previous years which will give you a pretty good result (I would hope).

 

[Glaucus]

well they do ask questions to determine how much you use to make this more accurate, and if you have been in place with a routine for a long time you can enter your definite usage figures from previous years which will give you a pretty good result (I would hope).

It does not break it down into the required slots for the provider, making it pointless.

Npower for example don't only have two rates, but those rate level changes over the year and the limit for the cheaper units is much higher in the winter months where you use more gas. Search sites do not take this into account, average out the stats and so return a very cheap result and "save" you money. Then when you hit winter, you suddenly find out, you are several hundred pounds worse off.
Yearly figures for such tariffs are no good on their own.

 

[darael]

The best comparison site I've used, is Which. http://www.which.co.uk/switch/

As provided on my bill, I put in my annual kWh consumption for gas and electricity and it got my annual consumption exactly the same as my provider had forecast - to the penny!

 

[~Divine~Wind~]

theres a few comparison sites try them all.
I locked in a couple of months back til winter 2014.
no Exit fee's either so if Im unhappy can switch again

I hear EDF and scottish power both had good deals recently but they've now been pulled.

Remember cashback also, I got £30 goign thru MSE, I'd normally try for more but the company I was moving to had no higher cashback available.

I've moved supploers a lot always taking cashback into consideration and using this to decide wether its best to go with cheapest or the not so cheapest after cashback. Remember tho cashback is never 100% guaranteed.

 

[Fourstar]

freaky. just watching martin lewis on this morning and he's pedalling his ''lock in now'' speach.

without derailing the thread, just how much can be saved by doing this? he was banding figures of £250+ PA about but i've heard counter arguments for comparison site savings being more like maybe £25 PA.

Locking in doesn't save you any money per say. It does however fix the price you pay while locked in so that if the price goes up you save against a floating rate.

With talk of the major players hiking prices by up to 10% there is a significant saving to make. His £250 figure probably comes from people who don't switch to the best rates each year and are on whatever inflated price they get for autorenewal with their current provider.

Little known fact I only recently learned. UK is the only major gas importer in the world that does not have guaranteed supply contracts in place with exporters. Hence we get stung whenever supply tightens or Qatar decides to reroute some of "our" supplies to Asia. On the flip side we do pay less overall for the gas than Asian markets. For now at least..

 

[Narj]

Annoying how I only get a 6 monthly bill and all the comparison things work on a monthly, quarter or annual basis. :/

 

[NotAGolf]

Thanks for the advice all.

I will definitely be using TCB for cashback as possible Devine

Glaucus; when you say the comparison sites are pointless, are they really that off the mark? I understand what you're saying about the different rates on a single tariff not being taken into consideration, but if you plug in the numbers yourself are we talking a few quid? Tens? Hundreds?
I recently saw something that British Gas are introducing a flat fee and a single unit price for at least one of their tariffs (can't remember where I saw this though), so hopefully the other will follow suit or be forced into it.

I'll probably use a few comparison sites to get a ballpark figure for the best deal and then run through the figures manually (if possible) to see how they compare.

And one final thing, for those mentioning a fixed deal, I can't see how this is going to save massive amounts. Surely the providers must know roughly how much the prices are going to increase/decrease over the lock in period. If they know this then they'll make sure the unit rate they offer covers any price increases over the lock in period. If they don't do this they will be losing money so I can't see this happening.