A "good enough" conversion is easy so long as you know if your meter is metric or imperial. The formula should be shown on your bill. Or see
Sorry, not your 251 but the spaced-out Tim's...
His site,
Mix the results from his site with Topcashback and more cashback is often possible.
LOL
I'd have to say that it's quite painful watching T i m being brought up to speed on all this. and his having to have every little detail laid out for him, with him moaning and groaning at every step. His conversion to a vegan diet was much easier, as it seems to have come about from pressure by his family followed by months and months of his post-facto justification. So much for his approach of getting all the facts in and then making a decision. He and a Standard Tariff deserve each other...
That's why you need to know your actual annual consumption when comparing tariffs and then signing up for a 12/24 month contract. This is assuming that your future consumption is going to be comparable with your previous consumption.
It's also the reason why you cannot rely totally on others recommending company A over company B. Some tariffs may suit low energy users and some tariffs higher energy users. Then again you could go with a company that has easily understandable billing and only charges on units used basis, but for me I've always found their tariffs to be much higher than what I'm paying with daily fixed and unit charged.
Many energy comparison site allow a check of individual fuels to see which company offers the best deals.
Only if you put in a realistic annual energy usage figure and/or the monthly payment amount accurately reflects the true costs (with no debit or rebate due at the the end of a year)
Thanks.
Given my meter readings are so irregular I'm not sure how useful they would be to help pin anything down (no repeats of the same period year on year etc).
I was actually looking at our BG account overview yesterday (I don't normally, 'she' deals with all this and the payments etc) and sort of follow it.
What I saw was regular monthly (DD) payments of say £100 that built up in our BG account then every so often (sure it was less often than 3 months they would take payment. So, you would see, in the credit col,
100, 200, 300, 400, then in the debit, 350 and so leave 50 in the credit col.Because the last batch of readings were estimated they had overestimated our actual readings and so it got confused that my submitted reading was less so it looked like it had to be manually cleared so the next day and they had billed us loads then refunded us loads (Reversal?).
But the bottom line is that assuming they don't allow such a obscure jump in meter readings, I work on the basis it will sort itself out in the end?
She keeps tack of any transactions between our online banking and a paper log and yesterday we cross referenced all the payments as seen on our BG account (that was though Sainsbury's Energy for a while) and it all seemed to tally up.
We also got ahead on the electric so the monthly payments went from ~100 to ~60 then back up to ~90 and I think that's about right for now.
The gas is £250 in credit so we will probably request some of that back, before / if we change suppliers.
Since I've been married to the current woman (~30 years), I've not really dealt with any of this, have trusted her to keep on top of it all (online normally tallies with paper log exactly) and she speaks to all the suppliers re any issues etc. She's not as confident now so ... any changes of / to the system can be seen to be taking yet another responsibility from her and I don't want to do that for (just / even) a couple of hundred pounds.
Like I said ... 'bigger picture' ... ;-)
Cheers, T i m
But watch the very small print!
When there were stepped charges from other companies if you used X amount of energy in a month you would be on one of Y tiers. This suggested that if you had a high energy use in December you would be on the higher tier and a low energy use in June a lower tier. The energy companies didn't work it this way - they averaged out the estimated usage for the year and applied that to the monthly usage figures. I doubt if anyone actually paid the lower tier price!
Hehe.
When it should actually say 'Your predicted savings based on the information you gave us and assuming you don't get a reduction from your existing supplier and we stick to this price could be a random (likely small) amount either way'. ;-)
Cheers, T i m
I'm currently on a fixed price, no exit fee, contract until May 2021 and I tend to look every few months. All alternatives at the moment are at least £70 more, and some £150 more. It looks if I switched at the right time when there was a dip in market prices.
Ah! You're on the Pontius Pilate Tariff.
Not if he is giving up Nectar points!
No-one gives anything for free. The cost of the Nectar points will have been factored into the energy tariff.
+1 for
Only Brexit?
How can someone trust the advice for saving money on energy from anyone who voted leave and maybe has had the flu jab?
What do you consider to be the bigger picture?
As I mentioned, there can be more to this than just the surface 'cost'. I think we lost the Nectar point thing when Sainsbury's Energy stopped and put us back directly with BG. We have been with BG and Eastern Electricity (and whatever they became) from the beginning.
No, but sometimes the value they add can be worth having.
Like, we are often offered if we want to use our Nectar points at the checkout at Sainsbury's and in many cases our shopping is (effectively) free.
Yes, but like with TopCashback you can leverage the actual value by choosing supplier that give you more for your actual money. eg, You can transfer £50 to your bank account or get a £60 Amazon credit.
Now, if you need the cash and don't need anything from Amazon then it's of no advantage ... but if you do ...
I use TopCashback where possible and even with the 1% or whatever you get with eBay, it can all add up. I think I have over £100 in there atm, handy for that next 'want' rather than 'need' etc. ;-)
Cheers, T i m
Yeah, I have used them before (for that and other stuff).
That's how I know, it signed me in automatically when I checked again yesterday.
I do often get emails from MSE but I rarely open them. Whist we aren't rich we don't need to be trying to chase down every last penny, especially when any 'decision' can be short lived and even trap you in a less that ideal tariff.
Like, we didn't know my stepdaughter would get cancer and our daughter would lave home to go and care for her and then her daughter.
So, our electric / gas consumption has probably dropped (1/3rd less showers / baths, WM/ TD/ DW all on less if on at all) and we might have been stuck with a high user tariff and be penalised because we were now low rate users?
Yup, all that 'faf', if you really aren't interested in chasing temporary savings that could be worth less than 50p / day.
Cheers, T i m
The reason may be because you have personally rejected most of the better deals by excluding monthly DD.
But you can't be arsed to save £70 by switching energy supplier, so why are you being so righteous about saving £100 in dribs and drabs? Can't you see the bigger picture here?
Which is likely to happen if previously you have shopped around and got a decent deal, especially if energy prices are rising.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.