New electric meter - how to read ( Economy 7 tarriff reader)

But I dont have that option. Equpower do not supply to my area. I have checked. I have the lowest charges I can more or less get without having to go to paperless billing. I dont nthink that the difference ( about 50 odd quid a year according to estimates) makes enough difference to loose access to the suppliers phone helpline. I have found that invaluable recently.

Have a look at some of the switching sites, going for a paperless,

I have checked with a lot of different sites and worked the figures in many ways. As I said above other than paperless billing I have got the cheapest deal I can get here. We do not have this equ popwer thing in my area and my main choices at the top oof all lists are either scotishpower or british gas fixed price. There are no others cheaper. Scottishpoer and British gas are listed as having six different rates each! But there is no one else cheaper. The others have standing charges hiking thigs up. This power supply market is like everything else, if you live in the right place you can get it cheaper ( or get it at all). Where I live I have to pay for the privledge.

Its the same with getting a storage heater. I have had to send via the internet to a place in the SE of England for the best price. Not only that, I cant even find a supplier near me so I couldnt fetch one if I wanted. Nest prices seem to be in either the North or the SE.

Reply to
endymion
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On Sat, 23 Aug 2008 07:37:24 +0100 someone who may be "endymion" wrote this:-

Where is this place where you can get electricity from Scottish Power and British Gas, but not Ebico? The map at shows where electricity is available from Ebico (and the other two companies). As long as you are not in Northern Ireland you should be able to get electricity from all three, if you are in Northern Ireland I understand that you have the "choice" of one supplier.

Reply to
David Hansen

According to your link, what I gain on the swings I loose on the roundabout, which probably explains why they didnt show up.

day: 14.67p per KWh (inc VAT) night: 5.24p per KWh (inc VAT)

My cuurrent rates are 16p for day rate and 4.5 for night rate.

Their day rate is lower, their night rate is higher. Overall difference on my consumption at current readings would be a couple of quid.

Reply to
endymion

The figures you quote in another message match Equipowers E7 tarrif for =

the SW region. Ebico do supply the SW and see Mr Hansens post...

AFAIAA you don't loose access to the suppliers helpline. I recently spen= t a merry afternoon on the phone to Southern, Scottish & Southern and Ebic= o trying to work out why the rates that Ebico sent at the last price chang= e were not the ones on my bills and the DD discount had effectively gone.

There are very few tarrifs that have truely have "no standing charge", Ebico is one of those but the unit price is slightly above the cheapest =

but no where near some prices. Those tarrifs marketed as "no standing charge" almost invariable have a dual rate system where you pay a premiu= m for the first X units. When you do the maths this premium equals the sam= e tarrif with the daily standing charge option.

I did notice the other week that there are a few tarrifs where the Tier =

2 and normal rates between "no standing charge" and "standing charge" were= different but not by much, 0.2p or so.

Scottish Power I also use online, paperless, direct debit etc. I'm very =

happy with their service and prices. As of a few days ago they have yet = to put up their prices (along with nPower) so getting a fixed rate until 20= ?? deal now might be quite beneficial... E.On and Scottish and Southern recently have gone for price hikes of 15 to 20% on lecky.

If you are in the old SWEB region they are not the cheapest region but I= don't think there are any restrictions on who you can use for supplier down there. I noticed the other day that many suppliers no longer offer =

online switching, you have to write or ring 'em up. This is sometimes no= t very clear on the switching sites, those sites make their money from online switching so tend to not push those that can't be switched on lin= e.

There wouldn't be a supllier within a 50 mile round trip for me, if then= , more likely to be 100 miles. Fetching one would be =A320 to =A340 in the= car fully costed. Delivery charges are rarely more than the cost of me going= to get something.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Thanks for the heads-up, i'll have to keep my eye open for that one...

Your contract is with Ebico though, so you "should" only have to deal with them for all billing issues...

Reply to
Colin Wilson

On Sat, 23 Aug 2008 08:55:39 +0100 someone who may be "endymion" wrote this:-

If you used an on-line "comparison" tool you were perhaps not aware that these generally don't show all suppliers with their default settings.

There have been various defences by the on-line comparison guide operators of the fact that they have programmed this behaviour into their software. I have never been convinced by any of these defences. In the absence of any convincing argument to the contrary I continue to note that the on-line "comparison" sites generally promote those suppliers who give a (small) payment for everyone who switches via the site. A lot of small payments add up to a large payment. Follow the money is still a good approach.

Reply to
David Hansen

On Sat, 23 Aug 2008 10:17:00 +0100 (BST) someone who may be "Dave Liquorice" wrote this:-

I hope that any direct debit discount with your previous supplier did indeed disappear when you switched to Ebico. That is precisely what should have happened.

"So how does our own tariff work, apart from the regional variation? What makes Ebico different?

"EquiPower, as the name suggests, is an equitable rate available to all domestic customers in England, Scotland and Wales. We even out between all our customers the different expenses of different payment methods. Nobody is penalised because of his or her budget or circumstances or by how much gas they choose to buy.

"Everybody pays at the same fair rate and there are no standing charges.

"In contrast, most other energy supply companies charge pre-payment meter customers at a higher rate than other customers. Their reason is that there?s more effort involved in servicing this payment method ? i.e. supplying and looking after the meters, which are the company?s property.

"When you consider that pre-payment meter users have to pay up to a third more than online customers in some regions, you realise what?s special about EquiPower

"As well as that, other companies also usually offer deals that mean people are charged less if they use a lot of energy, or when they commit to paying in a particular way. This means people pay a lower rate because they spend more.

"In effect, the market at large rewards those who have more money to spend in the first place. Ebico aims to reverse that market trend. It may be the only energy company that actually encourages people to spend less!

"When you consider that pre-payment meter users have to pay up to a third more than online customers in some regions, you realise what?s special about EquiPower."

Reply to
David Hansen

No, with Ebico the supply contract is with Scottish & Southern Energy, under one of their brands, see

formatting link
(about your bills).

Reply to
Andy Wade

Except that Southern issue the bills for Ebico... But Southern have no control over how those bills are calculated (rates etc) that comes from Scottish and Southern.

Anyway it boils down to the billing system being unable to cope with a Direct Debit Discount of 0% (or perhaps different DD discounts depending on the tarrif), so it has to apply the default 6%.

Ebico do not do a DD Discount so, if you pay by DD, the unit rates used on the bill are raised by 6% which is the removed by the 6% DD discount that has to be applied when you pay by DD.

The thing to check is what the rates are if you *don't* pay by DD, they should be the published Ebico ones, not Ebico +6%.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

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