Change tariff?

I switched to a 18-month fix for Gas from Octopus at a unit rate of

Worth the 5 minutes to do so. Is your life so profitable that you can't spare five minutes - or are you a winging nihilist?

As for this contract's Standing Charge, there is about 1p difference in favour of the Fixed rate contract - which I don't intend to contest. {As I light yet another thick cigar with a £50 note.}

Ouch. I recently looked at the prices at Outfox and the gas price started with a 6... although maybe the futures market has moved on. Did you try a comparison site?

They're just a pricing knob. All the tariffs have is a straight line y = mx + c

where y is the bill, x is the number of units, m is the price per unit and c is the standing charge. They offer various tariffs with different m and c to target different markets - heavy users, light users. The standing charge is just the fixed part of this formula. You can be sure they get the money either way, whether some of it is part of the unit cost or not. They know the spread of customers' consumption and so they set the tariffs so the house wins either way.

Theo

Well, I'm pleased that you and I are in agreement. I just didn't know exactly hoe they calculated things.

I'm not so much of a "winging nihilist" (see reply to my OP) as a "whinging cynic". I believe that /nothing/ the energy companies do is ever for our benefit, but always works to their advantage. Heads they win, tails you lose...

I did sign up to a fixed rate, so the war in the Middle East will soon be over and the prices will drop. Just my good turn of the day. ;-)

And The Pope is a Roman Catholic ...

"so is it worth bothering?"

It always strikes me whenever I find anyone posting on social media that they've no time to do this or that.

The Paradox is Perfect. ;}

As for your "The war will be over by Xmas"-alike prediction, it didn't work out in 1914 ...

In my mail in-box I'm being offered fixed price deals from the big companies that "must end" in a couple of days. The selling point is the current rise in price and a suggestion that they rise again at the same rate for a long time. These deals are for 2 years and with £125 exit fees. The cynic inside me suggests it's to lock people into a high fixed price for the next 24 months but the companies know that prices will likely to fall within the period of the contract.

As Theo noted, the companies never lose. It's why I signed up for only a year. The exit fee is £50. I don't expect to gain or lose anything significantly different from what I'd pay as "standard variable".

The only slight benefit is that now EDF will stop pestering me to change tariff - at least until the one I'm on is about to expire. I guess that if I'd signed up with one of the utility cost-comparison sites, I'd get umpteen emails offering me the best rate too. I already have that with confused.com for insurance.

Some of this is a futures contract - they know they can pre-order X units at M price, for delivery over 12/24/etc months. The exit fee covers breaking the contract. Next week there will be a different futures price and so they issue a new tariff.

Even a variable tariff is a hedge against market pricing - wholesale prices are set in 30 min chunks, but variable tariffs update quarterly.

Lots of financial engineering.

Just give a fake email. When switching, go to the energy company direct and see if you can find tbe same tariff. Most of the cheap tariffs don't pay a kickback to switching sites - they still show them, but you have to go direct to order anyway.

Theo

On 01/10/2026 09:36, Theo wrote: confused.com for insurance.

Is that the same with utility providers as with insurance companies? Confused.com give several different company quotes based on the info you provide. The company I was already with had access to the confused.com page, so when I phoned them up and said I could see cheaper renewal quotes on confused.com, they immediately accessed the page and said they would lower the renewal premium. That wouldn't work with a fake email address as I wouldn't have got the confused.com quotes as a single entity, and the present insurers wouldn't have a page to access - I'd just be getting individual quotes from each company (and I'd still have to provide them with an email address. I guess I could use a throwaway address, but I think companies are getting wise to some of those and won't accept them).

I have this constant argument with RenewableDroids™ who tell me that 'electricity is expensive because gas prices'

Gas power plants are around 50-60% efficient and they buy gas wholesale, so how come electricity is *three times* the price of gas?

It couldn't be because RenewableDroids™ are lying, could it?

LOL!

The Hormuz situation will stay until Trump is kicked out of office and can no longer profit from it.

As for the 'three day special military operation': That will stay as long as Putin is alive, so it *will* be over by Christmas.

Which Christmas, is moot.

I believe it is due to government inducements to builders of renewable kit in the form of price guarantees, possibly for a fixed time.

It's more than that. Its the money they have to pour into the grid to get any semblance of reliability out of it with >30% renewables on it