Switching power supplier

[MikeS1]

I'm fed up with the annual price rises for gas and electricity and have looked into changing supplier. I've done an enquiry on www.moneysupermarket.co.uk and according to them I could save £200 a year by switching to one they recommend.

Does anyone know of any drawbacks in switching supplier. Does Money Supermarked charge a commission (I can't see anything about that in the small print)?

Would appreciate hearing of anyone's experiences, good or bad.

 

[ClaireDavid]

We literally had the same thought and after years with british gas, weve had enough, and we went to Uswitch.com and we are now in the process of switching to scottish power online account management which they say will save us over

 

[Lol1]

We switched, we saved, apart from two letters and a phone call had nothing else to do. It is easy, price savings being important, but take the time to look at how the supplier is rated for customer satisfaction. There are other price comparison web sites out there, check on them too, before you make a decision.

 

[BigAl1]

Mike S

I recently changed gas and electric suppliers with the aid of USWITCH.COM

The site did the maths and told me that I would save a stack so I swapped.

uswitch did all of the work so I quess they had a bung from my new supplier (EDF).

The change went very smoothly without any hiccups

 

[DavidW1]

Mike,

Have you anybody over 60 in your household? If so give Staywarm a consideration. We were being ripped off by Brit Gas and Southern Elec and changed to Staywarm (a Powergen offshoot)

Our bills went down by about 70%.

They have put prices up over the years but how does

 

[cooky1]

Mike, as others have reported, we changed last year and had no problems at all. All done on the net and we have saved money.

 

[MikeS1]

Thanks for all the positive replies. Puts my mind at rest. I was imagining doing the switch and then finding out that in the small print there were hidden charges that ate up the savings.

Off to make the switchover now.

 

[smiley]

We are switching for the first time. Going with Atlantic for the gas and edf for electricity.

But they weren't top of the list. My hubby did a spread sheet and they were the best for us.

I still have to register with the current provider, as soon as I do that and the phone is down, I will ring edf and switch to them.

 

[Moonstone1]

'They have put prices up over the years but how does

 

[cris_408518]

OK. If you are concerned about heating bills for gas central heating.

Think about what you are heating to! Our present house and our old house had wooden floors with the pipes running between the joists.

We have the under floor pipes lagged to retain heat as the water circulates. Many radiators are situated windows and curtains trapping the heat ouput between window and curtain and those twee radiator covers and shelves retain heat that could be circulating in the rooms. Reflective foil behind radiators stops the wall being heated to.

Get the heat where you want it, if you are not paying to heat the wrong places you can turn the boiler down and use less gas to.

 

[Guest]

We have switched ourselves and it was pretty painless. We didn't even have to get the meters read, our own supplied readings were sufficient.

However, to be really sure you are going to a better deal it is a good idea to know exactly, or as close as possible, the consumption you are likely to use in a year. Check back your old bills and note the readings and try to get full year's worth. Then work out your KWH useage for both gas and elctricity. Plugging these figures in something like uswitch will give you a pretty accurate idea of the savings you are likely to achieve.

The other thing to look at is your current suppliers and whether they havea better (cheaper) tariff available. They don't always rush to tell you that you can switch internally and save.

 

[smiley]

In our last house we pid

 

[Alan Partridge]

Just one word of caution - the suppliers don't all change prices at the same time, so when BG (for example) moves first, everybody checks the possible savings to see if it's worth switching. The others then seem to wait a while to pick up some new business, then follow with their price rises and the relative costs change again.

Moral is, check from time to time, not just when you have had the price rise from your existing supplier.

 

[deejay]

After repeated price "hikes" and poor service,we changed with money supermarket last september from British gas to Npower,gas and electricity. No probs at time, all done on line and no "charge". We are having probs at present as both B.gas and Npower are charging us for the same amount of gas! Bgas say they havnt received a final meter reading from Npower, npower assure me that their opening meter reading was given to Bgas!

Would advise anyone switching to keep and record all meter readings and note all correspondence.After personal experience, as well as being substantially cheaper,my new provider also has better customer service than B.G!. I have also used moneysupermarket and Uswitch for both cars and house insurance and saved loads. I use www.moneysavingexpert.com and have saved lots of money and loads of tips from this site. There is quite a lot of info about switching utilities here.

 

[cris_408518]

One of our relatives moved to a new home where the elderly former owner had got into payment difficulties and had a key paying meter fitted. Confusion rained when they changed supplier and them got on to monthly billing. They ended up with bills from two suppliers and being charged the wrong rate as the meter had been set to retrieve unpaid money. Before they could get it sorted they got a bill from another supplier they had never signed up to, according to the 3rd supplier they had signed up at their front door on a day they were both at work and could prove it! They got it sorted after 20 months !

 

[cris_408518]

ps, when they called the power watch people to complain they were told that what was happening was impossible and they must be mistaken.

 

[cokey1970]

It's worth having a look at Moneysavingexpert.com for his feature on energy suppliers.

Although it is difficult to predict when the suppliers will hike prices, there is a table on the site showing when each supplier last raised their prices.

 

[GillC1]

I went to powergen probably not the cheapest but at least you can collect tesco clubcard points with them and then use your vouchers to go book your ferries for the summer hols.