Son No 2 has just bought a house and I'm trying to help him sort out his utilities. Gas and Electric were supplied to the last owner by the Utility Warehouse Club, which I had never heard of. Looking them up, it seems they have a board consisting of a bunch of accountants who operate what to me looks like a pyramid selling scheme, so they have many tens of thousands of "agents". Reviews swing from wildly negative to wildly positive (from the agents?) with hardly anything in the middle ground. It's also a telecom company (Telecom Plus), so in an ideal world it would be easy to put him onto this company and get them to provide phone and broadband as well, but the reviews worry me. The negatives have a recurring theme of confusing bills, bailiffs threatened and difficulties with leaving when it goes pear-shaped.
Like his brother, he will be travelling a lot, so I'll probably have to deal with any problems.
Does anyone here have any experience of them? I do know that utility companies don't scrub up well in the press and I have had to help an elderly relative in her ongoing battle with Scottish Power.
The last time I looked on a comparison site they assumed that once my (price) contract with my current supplier had finished that I would opt to go on their most expensive tariffs. As a result everyone else was cheaper. If factoring in the fact that I could select a cheaper tariff with my existing supplier I worked out that the yearly price difference was around a tenner compared with the best of the alternative quotes.
Who is the better supplier, price wise, depends on your OWN usage of gas and electricity. Even if you change the usage figures by 10% can make a large difference to the order in which alternatives are listed and the prices saved, or not. As for entering how much are you paying per month' figure, is that the average for the whole year, a snapshot of your last bill or the amount that the utility company takes so that you end up with £200 in credit per year?
If going to a new property you will not have any knowledge of your likely usage for the year, especially if the house will be unoccupied for periods so the way the comparison sites work makes them particularly useless in this instance.
All that is true, but it seems the OP was dubious about the supplier, so I was merely suggesting he dump said supplier and go with the cheapest (by estimate) of whoever wasn;t the current supplier :)
They can have real products but the promised "make £5,000 in a week" is only possible if you have recruited a lot of others below you that are working their socks off and you are supplying.
As for the OP go to a comparison site or three and plug in current use levels. It might be worth adjusting the space heating numbers up/down as seems sensible from the curent house to those of the new. Could be tricky if son has no previous figures but even a spread possibly based on current owners use (and indication of their life style) would be useful to see which suppliers give the best deal.
As has already been pointed out if the use is low any standing charge becomes significant. Ebico only do tariffs with no standing charge(*) but other suppliers also do these days. Or did we have nPower "Price Fix April 2015" electric only on fixed monthly DD that has no standing charge. Unit cost is moderate at 14.2p compared to 10.79p on the meter that carries the bulk of our use.
(*) No standing charge at all not even a "hidden" one, you pay for what you use only at a single rate. Use nothing pay nothing. No first X hundred units at rate plus and more than X units at rate. Best to plug the rates and use intoa spread sheet to work out the break point between prospective tarrifs.
So do Avon and Betterware. Who like Utility Warehouse don't advertise.
The difference is that in a pyramid scheme the prime objective is to recruit yet more agents, not actually sell anything. Although usually most recruited agents have to commit to buying loads of stuff for delivery later by paying a hefty deposit which goes straight to HQ.
And came to their conclusions based on the responses from statistically irrelevant number of customers. By the way, the figure for Warehouse changes by 12% if you go to a different Which? web page.
I'm with Utility Warehouse. They are a pyramid scheme in as much as their agents can recruit other agents and get a (very small) percentage of that agent's sales. I understand that if I was to sign up other people through my agent I would get 0.5% off my bill for each service they sign up to. e.g. If I point someone at my agent and they sign up for gas, electricity, landline and broadband then I'd get 2% off my bill. Rinse and repeat for up to (ISTR) 25% reduction. I've not signed anyone up; not interested in selling to friends and family that way.
The plus points:
They say they'll be cheaper than the 'big six' companies.
The bill is incredibly easy to understand - dunno who is giving negatives for confusing bills - and it's one bill, one payment per month.
Their customer service is fine, I've had to phone a few times (queries about what tariff I was on, a couple of broadband problems) and never had a problem getting through or finding a resolution. Example: I was on a 2GB per month broadband tariff. Someone came to stay for three months and blew that out of the water, I ended up paying their max 'additional data' charge of an additional £25 per month. Of course, by the time I'd got the first bill and phoned them up, I was due to pay £25 for the subsequent month as well. The customer service rep apologised: she could refund my £50 but would have to put me on the unlimited BB tariff and backdate the small additional monthly charge. Result.
I never get marketing calls or emails from them.
Some additional extras can be worthwhile: They do a prepay debit card, costs £1 per month plus 35p each time I put money on it, but gives a 5% discount in Argos, B&Q, Homebase, Halfords, 3% off Sainsburys, around 30 other outlets are discounted too.
The minus points:
They have about 3 tariffs for gas and leccy, Light, Medium and Heavy user or somesuch, and don't automagically switch you to the most appropriate one. You'll need to guess your usage to start with and keep an eye on it.
No 'eco' or 'green' tariff, if that's what you are after.
And that's all I can think of.
I'm happy with them, going to stay with them until I've a reason to move. They're a business, in it for profit just like the others, but having heard some horror stories about British Gas and nPower I think their reputation is better than most.
Thanks, that's exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. I will pass that on to the son, and also point him at Ebico. Am I right to assume there is no up front payment needed? Some of the reviews seemed to imply there might be.
We have now been thinking of going to one of the Big6 for a year to establish the usage in an organisation that ought to be easy to move from, and then looking around for cheaper and better options. The one thing we still have to navigate is the transfer or move from Utility Warehouse. Again, moving accounts seemed to feature in many reviews.
Cheapest for me has normally been one of the big 6 - Currently with Scottish Power (well, there was a new company, that was marginally cheaper, but I tend to steer clear of those, come into the market, price low to try and get market share, and then struggle with customer service). UW has never been competitively priced for me
TBH, I've not had any problems with our suppliers - been with Scottish, BG, npower, and with Scottish again, all ahve been fine
I'm sure figures can be massaged to suit. UW at least have a formula to keep them the low side of average, which is really what I was after - I can't be bothered farting around every six months to see if I can get a tenner off here or there.
I can't remember - I pay a set amount for gas each month, a set amount for leccy etc. IMO paying up front just loses a month's interest - which in a current account is pretty much zero - and if the utility company can generate a few quid profit from this then so much the better. I won't end up paying more overall for the energy I've used.
Moving one supplier to the other should be painless, albeit a bit of a faff. You might be without broadband for a short while, but there won't be a gap in your energy supply or (AIUI) your landline.
I didn't find UW particularly competitive when I used them (a long while back). Just used energylinx to compare and for my location with the mid use UW tariff the competition are showing 12% less for dual fuel or 17% less overall for split elec & gas.
That's the kind of saving that I could get out of bed for.
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