Electricity and gas suppliers

A very limited amount of information. I have just swapped to e.on, and have had one dealing with CS so far.

I reckoned my monthly DD ought to be about £150-£170 (yes, that's correct). However, I received a letter saying it was going to be £522!

I called CS, who answered pretty quickly. The woman said they were just going by the information they got from moneysupermarket, and it looks to me as if they mixed up monthly and quarterly amounts.

Anyway, she was very good. She cancelled the DD for that month, and set up one for a mutually agreed amount for the next month onwards. Friendly and helpful (she did sound as if she was doing it all the time...)

Always take a pinch of salt with online "reviews". People with a complaint tend to be rather more vocal than those that are happy.

Try and find out who's service Sainsbury's are reselling. I very much doubt they are really in the energy market directly. Ebico "resell" Southern Electric for example.

I'm happy with Scottish Power, I have a fixed monthly DD, online, no paper bills tarrif. Get an email prompt every quarter to read the meter and enter it on their website. The only slight gripe is that the bill isn't instantly available you have to wait a day or three and you don't get an email saying it's ready to view/download (as a .pdf) but that isn't a problem with a fixed DD. They did just bump up my DD above what I calculated I should pay, a quick, friendly, phone call and they put it down a more reasonable figure.

There may be 4,200,000 customers but of those 1% bad experience is

Key thing is watch if there is a lock-in period (there often is) with penalty fees for leaving, make sure you do not leave before the relevant date. It is well worth saving =A3100-200/yr on your bill.

If you can pay up front you can negotiate a 5% (or more) discount automatically, which with interest rates at circa 0.5-3% can be worth doing for some people. A slight issue is where is the cash held (in a customer account or with the company, if they go bust it may not be protected).

Not answering your question, but it can be worth taking a look at quidco etc when moving supplier. Some of them offer decent levels of cashback (not enough to make it worth selecting on that alone, but still nice to have :-))

Darren

I've been with Scottish power for several years, and they seem ok. It's all done online with next to no human contact, but that doesn't seem to matter. When I emailed them to ask them to reduce my DD based on my projected reduced consumption after my 99-y-o father-in-law (who lived with us for his last 4 years) had died, they responded positively.

As someone else said, you can't see your bill immediately after submitting your meter readings - which may be a problem for some people. They do immediately tell you the *amount*, but you can't see the calculation until later. In my case this doesn't matter because I maintain a spreadsheet which calculates my own bills - so I know what the amount should be before inputting the meter readings - and can thus check that all is well before confirming the readings.

In message , Ian writes

Indeed, by their nature they will be skewed. And these sites don't seem to show these complaints as a proportion of customers - so a large company will look worse.

Been with BG (for leccy) and nPower for gas for a while now. no complaints. Online accounts, but have occasionally needed to contact them on the phone and whatever issue it was has been dealt with efficiently. Never any issues with the DD etc.

When the BG account ended up significantly in credit, they refunded the credit at one of their 6 monthly checks and reset the DD to within about

I've just switched from Scottish Power to Ovo. I checked Quidco, but there was nothing that grabbed my attention this time. Though it is good advice, as when I originally moved to Scottish Power, I got £60 cashback I think.

JW

Ovo pay you interest on any credit balance! :-)

JW

We've been with e.on for several years. I have no complaints at all. Have changed the tariff several times with no fuss. All historical bills are visible online, as is year on year energy usage comparison.

About par for the course these days. Customer service is a thing of the past and not just for energy companies.

I can't say for sure. I was not pleased with E.ON (see my other post) and left them. I am now with Sainsburys (EDF) and time will tell. They haven't make any mistakes yet AFAIK and I like having physical paper bills.

One thing I would say is not to trust the price comparison sites' calculations. Calculate your actual predicted bill based on your usage. I found that the savings were less than the price comparison sites said they would be.

Beware of E.ON by checking the T&C's /very/ carefully. When I was with them they changed them so you lose all your discounts on your last bill. Since their unit costs are high and the discounts significant it left me with a bill of £80 more than I was expecting. (They did refund it after I threatened legal action but I doubt you would be able to reclaim this if the T&C's were like this when you joined).

Things I did not like with E.ON:

- Bills were not issued at regular intervals so it was hard to compare energy usage from year to year.

- Confusing bills and many tariffs which even /they/ did not understand.

- Short term tariffs where you are automatically put onto a more expensive tariff and you have to apply to go back onto the cheaper one.

- They would often issue me with two bills, one with estimated readings and then a corrected one with the real readings a day later.

- They play the DD trick and keep increasing my payments. Every time I have to haggle them down again.

But I guess they're all as bad.

Yes but you have to get the prices somewhere, any one site does that?..

Heres an example then. We have a location near Cambridge that uses

Who's the cheapest supplier ?. It seems to be Sainsburys ?..

Any advances on that?..

And be aware that there are really only two or three backends (the databases) but many frontends out there.

But the overall rating given to each company is the based on the /proportion/ of good reviews to bad reviews. For a big company you will get more bad reviews but you will also get more good reviews.

You can argue that people are more likely to post a bad review than a good one, but this is likely to apply to all companies. Therefore large companies will not come out unfavourably in relation to smaller ones.

What about people who can't pay by DD. Who do these people use?

I mean do the calculations yourself rather than rely on the estimated "savings" that the comparison sites give. Remember most of them rely on commission so it is in their interest to get you to switch.

The last time I used a comparison site I calculated the savings to be a lot less than the site predicted.

Agreed - at the end of the day, the comparison sites can give you an idea of whom to choose, but it's then best to go directly to each supplier - check rates, and work out the total cost yourself (and then check Quidco before signing up). Of course, the biggest con at this time of year is the 'apparently cheap' charges, which will then suddenly hike up when Russia/Norway get tight with their supplies.

Interestingly, in the Ovo spiel, they say that the majority of their fuel is coming from the North Sea still.

Oh - one other thing with Ovo - it's rather refreshing that they have just two tariffs. Green - and normal (which seems to be more green than others anyway). And they don't ponce around with "No standing charge", which to be honest just complicates every calculation. Unless you are a very low user, there's little point to NSC rates in my opinion (except to skew the figures in the supplier's benefit).

JW

In article , Mark scribeth thus

Right.. Your car..

Do you remember and tell anyone of the number of times it started Ok in all weathers.

Or..

Do you remember and tell everyone of the One time it didn't start and let you down or put you to a great deal of trouble a long way from home etc?..

Which?...

The latter - but only for the 4x4 - not for the Mini! ;-)