General Chat

try turning the heating down
and investing in a hot water bottle a cat and a snuggy blanket

and by the way its snowing again here blooming wonderful :-(

Step 5

Select one small company and one large company from your shortlist and look at all other aspects than price. Customer service, social payments, smart meters, insulation offers etc.

I have selected First Utility from my 3 small companies. And will wait to get info from SSE and E.On next week to see which is my preferred larger company.

I am a bit concerned that First Utility may increase their prices in Feb or March. Just a gut feeling. But it would have to be well above a 10% increase to knock them off top spot of my smaller companies.

SSE and E.On will be within £50 of EDF. So what will be important to me with the larger 3 companies will be incentives and extra services provided. And do I need any of them in next 12 months? And are they worth the extra £150 compared to First Utility?

I designed a simple Excel spreadsheet some years ago - so my only problem is to get prices from these companies. Not easy at all.

In fact, if anyone has up to date prices of lowest tariffs of other companies than the four I found this morning (and had to phone them all to check I was right) it might be helpful to some to share that info.

On my annual usage of 19360 Gas and 2725 Electricity, results were:

Good Energy - £1, 337 (£451 Elec and £886 Gas)
First Utility - £1,104 (£357 Elec and £747 Gas)
EDF - £1,263 (£417 Elec and £846 Gas)
Utility Warehouse - £1.322 (£452 Elec and £870 Gas)

It has taken me half an hour of phone calls to get this information (from 4 companies) this morning. I think they should be forced to list their tariffs monthly on their websites and make it much easier for Joe Public to compare.

Step 4

You have picked your companies and managed to find their cheapest tariff that suits you. The six companies I have picked tend to be a lot less secretive about pricing than others - yet it has not been easy. And two of the major ones on my list (SSE and E.On) are not manning the phones today (Friday).

But here are 4 of mine as at this morning:

Good Energy

Elec Standing Charge - 14.43p per day. Variable 14.63p per unit
Gas Standing Charge - 22.35p per day. Variable 4.157p per unit

First Utility iSavev12

Elec Standing Charge - 17.85p per day. Variable 10.746 per unit
Gas Standing Charge - 19.74p per day. Variable 3.485per unit

EDF Blue Plus

Elec Standing Charge - 18.9p per day. Variable 14.05 per unit
Gas Standing Charge - 26.25p per day. Variable 4.002per unit

Utility Warehouse

Elec Standing Charge - £3 per month. Variable 13.985 per unit
Gas Standing Charge - £1.40 per month. Variable 4.284per unit

You then simply multiply these totals by the number of units you consume in a year to get a simple price comparison between the companies you have selected.

Step Three - Choose companies to compare

Select about three large companies and three small companies.

The Big Six

British Gas - based in Windsor (parent Centrica)
EDF (Electricite de France)
E.On (German)
NPower (German)
Scottish Power (Spanish)
Scottish and Southern (based in Perth, Scotland)

Smaller Companies

Opus Energy
DONG Energy
CNG (Contract Natural Gas)
Corona Energy
Haven Power
Dual Energy
Gazprom
LoCo2 Energy
Good Energy
Ecotricity
Ebico
Utility Warehouse
Ovo Energy
The Co-operative Energy
M & S Energy
Sainsbury Energy
First Utility

Wow!!! Well, I am currently a customer of First Utility and last time I looked closely at a few of the others but First Utility suited me personally at that time. Remember that it is not a good idea to be a loyal customer - none of these companies value customer loyalty currently. In fact, quite the opposite.

This time round, I will look at E.On, SSE and EDF of the Big Six. And First Utility, Good Energy and Utility Warehouse of the smaller suppliers.

You don't have to pick from only 6 or as many as 6. And each of us would choose differently. And if you used any comparison site in Step One to calculate your approximate usage, you will already have an idea of which companies might give you a saving. :-)

Hope these tips wil be useful for some. Not claiming to offer anything complicated - just an easy way to keep your energy prices down. Normally I would not bother - energy is energy. Let's keep warm and use less of something else. But it is now my biggest cost of living and energy prices (and energy conservation) have taken my attention over last few years.

Spent £3,300 last year and still not sure if I will ever recoup that investment.

But energy saving is not really the purpose of this thread.

Step One - work out in Kwhs etc what you are approximatley using. If unfamiliar with Kwhs use a comparison websire, whack in amounts of money you are spending annually and they will convert that into Kwhs or whateber for gas and electricity.

Step Two. Follow some very simple rules of combat. Do not allow companies to bamboozle you with incentives, fixed price offers, complicated pay back deals, free gifts. Just go for dual fuel, direct debit, variable and flexible contract.

Step Three - to follow

Think John has over stretched himself with this one ... 11 hours later and still waiting for the grand finale of these tips .. lol

Aaah

Sorry Sue. What I meant is don't use comparison sites for switching. They all seem to be different, don't have all the tariffs, work out comparisons in a strange way. I am suspicious of them. They must get a big backhander for getting people to switch to particular companies and tariffs.

But comparison site are useful for working out much you use in this strange language of Kwhs and Kwh. Well worth getting info off their sites - also one or two companies might catch your eye for Step 3.

Bear with me - only 5 steps in total and I think none of them take more than a few minutes. It is something I have done every 6 months for about 3 years and puts me in total control and seems to save me money. And before that we were with British Gas for 40 years. But brand loyalty means nothing today.

Edit. Some of the posts on this thread are excellent. Some very good tips and some ideas that seem very clever to me. Like the pump that heats in winter and chills in summer. I want to make the 5 points as simple as I can though. It is a minefield for the unwary :-(

John, you said avoid comparison websites then you used one in your example didn't you?

Confused in West Wales

I have to have heating on a lot because of not being able to move about much but still wrap up in duvet a lot .
Wonder how many of us lucky enough to get the weekly cold weather payment will actually use it on fuel, I know when mine comes through this year I will move it straight onto gas account as know it will be up a lot this year, last time we got it we used it to pay for the extra coal we were using but this year we havent had coal fire on gone for the central heating instead.

Step One - work out roughly how much gas and electricity you use.

Step Two - Apply some simple rules:

1. Get elec and gas from same supplier
2. Ignore comparison sites and special offers
3. Ignore free presents and free prize draws
4. Pay by direct debit
5. Have paperless billing
6. Avoid fixed price contracts
7. Avoid any contract that is difficult to get out of quickly
8. Review 6 monthly

In other words, keep everything simple and basic in Step 2.

We had solar panel for water heating about 6 years ago along with a new well insulated cylinder.Been quite pleased with it and don't usually have to heat water from May- November ,unless family here using lots for baths etc.
Wasn't cheap to install but is a long term answer.
Also bought some foil panels to put on walls behind radiators which reflect heat back into rooms.

We are like you Joan; rural area, no gas, high oil prices. We did get the cavity walls insulated for free but no-one would come to do the loft because we live in a chalet type house. There is a lot of roof space and you can stand up in a lot of it but we couldn't get anyone in from government schemes or otherwise. In the end OH did it himself. We were able to buy good quality insulation at a local DIY place at a discount provided we only bought a limited amount - basically enough for one house.

A small tip: If, like us, you have to have oil for heating then buying in larger amounts works out cheaper so, if you ca,n get a big tank (ours holds well over 2000 litres) or combine your delivery with neighbours and buy as a group.

We are on the price promise deal with EDF for electricity and gas. You can input your readings online 24/7 or by phone.

We were paying £40.00 per month DD. When we entered our last reading EDF only took £10.00 out in December because our usage was less than expected.

At least this company doesn't hang onto your money for longer than a month and seem to be fair in offering an immediate reductiion.

The advantage of entering readings whenever you like is that if you use more than expected you can just make an extra payment.

Sue

If you cannot get gas ( or even if you can ) then an air source heat pump is worth consideration. They work like a fridge backwards and can save 40% costs over trad. heating methods. Installation qualifies for various grants and cheap VAT. Worcester Bosch and others have UK approved systems.

As a bonus ASHP can provide very effective summer air conditioning.
Ground heat pumps are more efficient but cost quite a lot more to install .

Solar is useless for electricity without unreliable government grants. It is however terrific with backing up water heating both for heating and kitchen/bathroom.

The big downer is that the most effective heating systems AND the most effective insulation systems tend to demand a fairly high up front cost. The people who most urgently need to reduce heating costs often find these costs far too high or do not control their property and are dependent on the choice of the landlord.

Sadly it does,nt make any difference to us, Wehave to have the heating on all the time,Winter and Summer due to Sasha,s Condition,costs a bomb.but needs must. :-(

Depend what you use the thermos water for Merlin, prefer not to have tea made with off the boil water really. OK in power cuts though.

We are fortunate as had new double glazing 2 years back, a new front door, wall insuklation and we have sufficient loft insulation. Noticed the difference in our heating bills after having the cavity wall insulation.

Ann,much better to fill the kettle ,use what you need and put the rest into a thermos Flask. and if you put Clingfilm on the windowframes, after applying use a warm hair drier on it to stretch it taut.**M**

Only put enough water in the kettle for what you need.

We add extra layers before putting the heating on and usually have it off, even when we are indoors, betweem 10.30 am and at least 3.30pm. I usually end up with 4 layers on, less if I am moving around.

I don't think there is anything against naming the companies John. Unless you are libelling them of course :-)