Cheaper electricaal supplier npower

[bm]

NPower are offering me a saving of £71 per year if I switched to them from Hydro Elecrtric Has anyone had experience of using nPower? Blair

[Dave Liquorice]

Switched to 'em a year ago on a 12 month contract, they wrote to me well before that contract was due to end (good) with notification of the reversion to their "standard tariff" with an associated 47% increase (bad) but I knew about the reversion when I signed up and had marked the diary... Shopped around but one of their other tariffs was still the cheapest so (in theory, waiting for the paper work) I have switched to that. (we shall see, the paper work should be with me by 28th).

[Andy Burns]

No, but I just used their online comparison calculator ...

I'm coming to the end of a 12 month fix with Eon, based on my actual consumption figures nPower say their fix until Aug 2013 would be £89/year more expensive, and their fix until Dec 2013 would be £130/year more expensive, their Go Save non-fixed tariff would save me £28/annum (depending on future price changes).

JOOI, does anyone know if smart meter readings are accepted by all suppliers, or only the supplier who fitted them?

[Andrew Gabriel]

It's closd now. It was covered on one of the Radio 4 programs. The best deal Which could get could only handle about 1/10th of the people who signed up. The second best deal that most of them will get is not as good as they would have got individually if they'd picked some of the best options that were available from suppliers during the sign-up period, so they lost out waiting for this scheme.

[geoff]

In message , Andrew Gabriel writes

Why was that then?

[Frank Erskine]

Why do they all have to make it so complicated? It should be possible to simply get a price list (on a piece of real paper) from each supplier quoting their price per BThU, kWh or whatever of gas and leccy, as well as any terms for, say, dual-fuel discounts, on-line readings submission and so on, so that the potential (!) customer can then enter these into a spreadsheet and choose the best option. Only today (well, yesterday by now) I was nabbed by a salesman (Eon, ISTR) in a shopping centre, asking me if I would mind telling him who my energy supplier is. I told him that I do mind (Scottish Power, as it happens, but don't tell the Eon salesman) - he quite politely said that he was just doing his job.

Of course the reality is that all their charges/tariffs are so volatile that choosing a "best deal" today may become horrendous almost tomorrow...

Speaking of which, the price of unleaded petrol seems to have dipped somewhat - locally Asda are doing it for 134.7 pence per litre. BP, who were one of the worst, are currently quite competitive .in certain locations.

[Andy Burns]

Some of the 12 month fixed price deals are only marginally more expensive than the current price of 12 month additional discount deals, the energy companies seem to be sending out scare stories for next winter already, presumably based on forward prices they're negotiating?

[dennis]

Didn't they use Co-Op as they were more "ethical" and used more green power than the others. If it really uses green energy then it *will* cost more.

[Dave Liquorice]

You show exactly why it's so complicated with all the extra discounts that can apply to the various base tarrif rates. All I'm really interested in is the final cost per unit on each tariff, after discounts, for the various charging structures of standing charge and "no" standing charge.

I don't even need a bit of paper, having the information displayed clearly and easy to find on the websites would be fine. Not buried inside a 200MB .pdf, the link to which is also buried six menus down behind a login page.

At least the comparison sites normally have a link to the actual charges that a given tariff has.

Very wise, there are far too many cases of people having their supplier changed without giving permission.

Diesel has also taken a nose dive. 137.9(*) at Tesco Leyland Extra last night. The Windle Roundabout Tesco Express was advertising 140.9 (still lower than 146.9, 144.9 and 142.9 Tesco Carlisle on the 13th,

28th April and 5th May) but hadn't got any so was quite pleased to be forced to Leyland. B-)

(*) actually paid 132.9 as I had a 5p off a litre voucher so double B-) And as each of those fillups has been >80l a reasonable bit of cash is still in my pocket.

Crude prices have been falling from the end of Feb to the begining of April the price was around $124/barrel (+/- $2). Since then is has fallen to around $112 and looks to be still falling down over $1 this morning to $111. (All prices Brent Futures this 10% or so drop is now getting through to the retail market. Just wish I hadn't had to buy heating oil two weeks ago. B-(

[Andrew Gabriel]

The big suppliers wouldn't take part, or wouldn't give good pricing. The small suppliers are limited on their available power, and can't suddenly muster up 10 times what they've already agreed to buy on the wholesale markets. I see the press are pointing out there are cheaper individual deals available today than the Which? deal.

The Which? scheme probably got too big, at least, for how the energy markets work today. There are many other smaller schemes running successfully. I suspect you just can't walkaround trying to buy energy for 30,000 homes (IIRC) - there isn't that much slop in the market, and trying to buy that much energy in one go will significantly force prices up. (I know that no more energy is actually required, but the markets don't work that way - it was already committed to other suppliers.) Also, the big suppliers would not have wanted it to work, and their lack of cooperation probably had a big impact.

[Andy Cap]

So the unwary pay more, which means especially the elderly and likely PC illiterate. It's a bloody disgrace that we penalise the less able in society in that way.

Andy C

[Martin Brown]

I'd be inclined to say that almost no-one can find their way through the maze of zillions of different electricity charging tariffs without computer assistance. They seem to have modelled it on the equally convoluted, opaque and perplexing mobile phone tariff schemes.

I don't know if they have improved the format of their billing but the last time I looked at an nPower bill it required serious effort to decode their incredibly convoluted charging system into user friendly form. Basically it is all obfuscation to prevent you noticing when the price goes up after the initial "poach a new customer" period.

All the energy companies do it to some extent, but nPower bills of a couple of years back were amongst the worst that I have ever seen!

I would be very wary of nPower coming out cheaper unless you do not live in their home region. It seems to me like a good rule of thumb that you have to avoid your local supplier to get a good deal.

Since customer loyalty is punished rather than encouraged the only thing you can do is look around and move from time to time. The biggest gain by far is made the very first time you move supplier.

Last time I looked EDF & Scottish came out fairly well for me - a relatively light user of electricity with oil heating.

[chris French]

I've been with npower for electricity for a few years now, they've been fine. No major issues, have had to ring them a couple of times bout something or other and it was all sorted painlessly enough IIRC.

AIUI, at the moment, the smart meter readings may or may not be used by another supplier, but presumably this will change in future, since the Govt want's all the meters to be smart meters eventually.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Isn't the National Lottery just a tax on the less intelligent members of society? And that's even sponsored by the Government...

[Andy Cap]

I guess so but to 'play games' with something as necessary as heating, is out of order IMO.

Andy C

[dennis]

Like the health lottery is a private tax as the 80% they keep doesn't go to the government unlike the national lottery.

[ARWadsworth]

Possibly. But I play it. I also have the odd bet if there is an event I am interested in (sometimes on line and sometimes with a friend) and this adds to the excitement of the event.

I spend a lot less on the lottery than I do on fuel and alcohol duty. I never buy scratchcards and I never buy extra tickets for rollovers. It's £6 worth of tickets a week. Of course I would like to win a million or two but I do not buy a ticket thinking I will win. ISTR £180 is the most I have won.

£6 will not get me to work and back for one days work.

I buy online and never need to check the numbers.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I used to participate when I worked for a small company and there was a syndicate, but that was rather more the thought of missing out when the others made their millions, but that never happened. Then another syndicate started up when they started the Wednesday lottery. I recall a conversation which went like this:

Me: I do a lot better out of the Wednesday lottery.

Syndicate: But you're not in it?

Me: Precisely...

We did win every few weeks, but it only ever paid for the next week's entries.

When I worked for GEC Computers many years ago, just along the corridor from me was GEC Traffic Automation, and we had a combined bowling team. This was a long time before the National Lottery, and the GEC Traffic Automation engineers had a Pools syndicate. Just after a round of redundancies which left about 2 managers for every engineer, the engineers came up trumps on the Pools, all stuck two fingers up to their management, and walked out. That was the end of their development team on that site (and it may have been the end of the company - I don't know if they had any other sites).

Unfortunately, it was also the end of our joint bowling team.