My fixed price dual fuel tariff with Scottish Power ends this month. I'm currently (no pun intended!) paying £93.99 pm and they are offering me a new one at £154.01 pm and I'm over £250 in credit. Their standard variable rate is £116.52 but of course will probably rise. Should I opt for SVR until it rises to match any later fixed price deal?
By which time the price of the fixed price deal on offer will have gone up and still be more than the variable rate.
Suppliers avoid risking their money by basing their fixed rates on their predictions of how wholesale prices will change. They're probably being over cautious and going for the highest guess. If wholesale prices rise by less than they expect you would be out of pocket with a fixed deal. On the other hand you will win on a fixed deal if prices rise faster than they expected.
Choose which foot you want to shoot yourself in.
I'm being moved from Avro to Octopus and will probably stay with the variable rate until things show signs of stabilising.
FWIW I would expect anyone who can /reliably/ predict future energy prices to be too busy enjoying their private island, yacht, Bugatti, etc to reply just now
I've got a fixed tariff with EDF until next May - 16p/unit. If I looked at changing to their current fixed tariff, it would be 27p or so per unit. Their standard variable is, at the moment, 21p or so per unit.
So you can see which way *they* think things are going.
The cap on the standard variable rate is being changed I think today. I would only consider a fixed rate if there was a no cost option to quit. Even the there would be a need to keep checking whether the fixed price was a good rate.
As Symbio has gone broke I am waiting to see who my new supplier will be and what will be the rate will be.
I think you'll find that the better run suppliers buy their gas on the futures market, rather than the spot market which those suppliers which went bust were probably doing.
But that just shifts the losses somewhere else. Anyone getting something for less than it (economically) costs, means someone somewhere could be losing money, which they will want to recover at a later date (somehow).
In my experience that's how SP run their business, to keep increasing the standing order amount regardless of the amount of credit in hand. I got £300+ back mid contract and was still in credit at the end of the year.
But it doesn?t mean that they will actually be able to do that.
Same here, no official notification yet..
I went onto the three year deal for e7 with edf, as its not that much more than the predicted rise they about to put in, so if it goes up more I'm safe but if not then I've wasted my time. There is not a right answer since going for a new supplier would be hard if the smart meter no longer works for keeping a track on the usage. Brian
But for the past decade or maybe longer the deals for 2+ years factored in predicted price rises and nearly always ended up at the end of the contract at the current price of the energy BUT you ended up paying the much higher price from day one.
In the current market if you have a any fixed period deal that was taken out towards the beginning of this year then you are going to win - unless your supplying company goes bust.
In previous years anything more than a 1 year fixed deal was unlikely have been the best choice. In some respects it depends on how much you are prepared to spend on your gamble for price stability.
It's much like some of the car/home insurance deals where some companies are guaranteeing the same premium next year and possibly the year after. What's the catch - they don't offer this deal if you only buy basic insurance. The deal is only if you also buy all the add on insurance packages which could cost 100s more than the basic package, and possibly the bits on which they they make most profit.
They had another laugh today. I downloaded my latest bill after entering my monthly meter readings on Friday and they are now offering me another fixed price tariff at (deep breath) £191 pm! and my credit balance is down to £238 now. What's the address of USwitch.com? :)
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