Utilities, who’s best for Gas and Electric

Sounds like some right nightmares! I'm stuck now anyway and have literally just submitted my initial meter readings fingers crossed the crappy computer leaves me alone!
 
Have you got an account setup online?

I think half my issues was they didn't get me an account working until 2.5 months late. So submitting readings and checking stuff was difficult for me, unless I rang and spent 30 minutes on a call every time.
 
a1ex2001 said:
be interesting to hear why your both so anti nPower given I've just moved back to them and had no problems with them a few years ago. Don't want to get caught out by anything!
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1. We joined them in March 2011 having moved home, we provided the current meter reading, which they lost for the first three consecutive months. They billed us incorrectly for that time period.
2. My fiancee (now wife) reported a gas smell to their meter reader when he visited. He blamed the old freezer and they 'never received' his meter read details.
3. They doubled our dual tariff bill from ~£78 to ~£140 in June 2011 even though we were still building up credit.
4. Every month we called them, said the bill was wrong and provided a meter reading. None of these contacts are recorded and the meter readings aren't there.
4. In December 2012 we were ~£710 in credit on our account. We reported that they were taking too much money from us, that our usage didn't match our charges and that they needed to stop estimating and charge on our usage. We again provided a meter reading which isn't recorded on their system.
5. In January 2013 they sent us ~£90 and a bill for the quarter of ~£900 and increased our monthly charge to in excess of £330[/B]
6. We stopped the direct debit and said that was absolutely ludicrous and that until they got their charging right we wouldn't pay them, they agreed to this approach.
7. In March 2013 Northern Gas Networks came to our property, said the gas meter was in the wrong place in the conservatory, that it should have never been there at all, and that they could smell gas and thought that there was a leak. They moved the meter into the garage and took the old meter away, saying that they had found a leak on the meter and a leak in the pipe running to the meter underneath our conservatory.
8. NPower still deny that they have even received the meter, have no record of the old meter readings, didn't know we had a new meter (despite being given the readings from the new one) and were unaware that our bill was in dispute.

The individuals on their helpdesk are helpful and sympathetic but useless.
 
Avoid npower like the plague, as well as comparison sites.
Comparison site said it would be the cheapest, it was far far from the cheapest but always comes up as the cheapest. They now the limitations of comparison sites and exploit it.

Many tariffs have two tiers and expensive rate and a cheap rate. These come out cheap on comparison sites, but in reality are expensive. As you'll find they are weighted so you have much more expensive units in winter, so you cant just take an average.

However if you don't have a decent set of data for usage, you'll have a hard time guessing. Depending on tariffs it matters down to the month when you use x-amount. Something comparison sites don't take into consideration.

Hard work, but make a spread sheet and Look at all the websites for tariffs and work it out.

my last spreadsheet (very out of date now) and totally different to what the comparison sites said, and that ones fairly basic as I was only interested in fixed rate, you can see the Scottish power had two rates, that differed per quarter (yellow and blue highlighted) which makes it more difficult to work out. Especially as many such tariffs have low initial rate in the summer when you don't use much and high rates in the winter when you do use lots, distorting average costs.

3bnz.jpg
 
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a1ex2001 said:
be interesting to hear why your both so anti nPower
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I can't speak for them, but my hatred of nPower dates to one of their bouts of illegal selling tactics a few years ago. Some nPower sales person knocks on the door and asks if I'd like to swap (I was with E.on). No. OK, would I be interested in a scheme where E.on supplied me, but nPower would send me an equivalent bill to show how much I would save if I did swap. That sounded fine, right up until I actually read the paper I was about sign. It was nothing like what the sales cowboy had told me, but was swapping supplier. He was escorted to the door. A few months later nPower were fined millions for this scam. And a couple of years after that they were fined again. They are top of my "not even at gunpoint" list, just about anything owned by Murdoch.


As for comparison sites: don't use your main e-mail. The main purpose of such sites is to spam you.
 
NPower getting a seriously bad press, here's hoping I'm not next inline for Ofgem!

Nice spreadsheet Glaucus, I didn't just take the comparison sites word for it I did do a little further research and some back of a fag packet maths. The whole market is so complicated, the only good thing is while my new supplier might not be the cheapest it is certainly cheaper than my old deal and better than the best they would offer me.
 
OMG that spreadsheet hurt my brain. I am so dumb with stuff like that, I just give them my money. Terrible I know but at 35, this last few months is the first time I have had to pay bills manually.

All my rented accommodation I always found bills were included in rent payment.
 
I'm with SSE who are putting prices up by 8.2% apparantly, so I think i'm going to have to do a comparison. I only stuck with them as they were the supplier when i bought the house... maybe it's time i shopped around.
 
Can't recommend whos best but can recommend against a couple.

Scottish power have been absolutely horrendous, massive queues to get thru on the phone at all times of the day, complaints procedure quite simply fails, requested call backs, they call back then hang up on you, emails go unanswered.

Would recommend you stay away from SP.

my mate at work is also having a right palava atm with npower over what appears to be a broken billing system
 
jellybeard999 said:
I'm with SSE who are putting prices up by 8.2% apparantly, so I think i'm going to have to do a comparison. I only stuck with them as they were the supplier when i bought the house... maybe it's time i shopped around.
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Time to switch and fix it, once one goes, you usually only have a few weeks, till everyone follows suit.
 
Glaucus said:
That is nut automatically a good thing, the important part s final price. No standing charge, doesn't mean its cheaper.
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Yes I know, depends on how much you use really. But if you are a low user or are away from home a lot then it is good.

Also their tariff is the same for normal meters and top up meters, where the standing charge is usually a lot more.
 
So whos goign long term fix adn short term fix?

Looking at my best oens at the moment seem to be:

Both EDF

Blue +Price Promise March 2015 |*Fixed till 31 Mar 2015 @359/q
Blue +Price Freeeeze March 2017 |*Fixed till 31 Mar 2017 @410/q

I used my highest quarterly readings for both gas and electric over the last year

900 kwh for 90 days elec
6500 kwh for 90 days gas
 
Meridian said:
I can't speak for them, but my hatred of nPower dates to one of their bouts of illegal selling tactics a few years ago. Some nPower sales person knocks on the door and asks if I'd like to swap (I was with E.on). No. OK, would I be interested in a scheme where E.on supplied me, but nPower would send me an equivalent bill to show how much I would save if I did swap. That sounded fine, right up until I actually read the paper I was about sign. It was nothing like what the sales cowboy had told me, but was swapping supplier. He was escorted to the door. A few months later nPower were fined millions for this scam. And a couple of years after that they were fined again. They are top of my "not even at gunpoint" list, just about anything owned by Murdoch.


As for comparison sites: don't use your main e-mail. The main purpose of such sites is to spam you.
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a few years back a guy knocked on our door claiming to be from our electric company yet wouldnt say what company that was or provide any ID etc. but had some paperwork for us to sign.

naturally suspicions arose so we said go away and we called our electric company and they didnt have any record of anyone coming to our address that day. so they asked to speak to him. the other half at the time went outside with the cordless handset to find him and made him talk to our provider.

turns out he wasnt from our provider as we thought he was from nPower.

we made official compaints to nPower and Ofgem.
 
Another nPower hater here too. A different tactic was used on me for changing my account.

Guy knocks on the door from nPower, was with BG at the time. He asks if I would like to switch, I say no and shut the door. A few weeks later I get a bill from nPower for my gas and electric. Ring them up and tell them I'm with BG s why are they sending me bills. They tell me that it was because I signed a switching agreement with them a few weeks prior.

Took ages to sort out, during which all sorts of threats by nPower about court proceedings as I refused to pay them. Turned out that the salesman had filled in my details and signed the agreement on my behalf, nice of him! :D Apparently he did this to quite a few folk. nPower still messed me around but eventually got back to being with BG.

I've just price fixed with the froggie/chinaman consortium for some good 'new' nuclear power until 2017.........
 
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