USwitch if You Want To, I'm Staying Put (Choosing a new gas or electricity supplier.)

Member Name: Nibelung

Product:	Choosing a new gas or electricity supplier.
Date:	10/10/02 (2631 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Definite savings to be had by going "dual fuel", Easy site to negotiate

Disadvantages: Garbage In = Garbage Out, Needs accurate data to get full effect

Ever since just about every public utility got deregulated, the average householder has been inundated with junk mail, not to mention 'cold-calling' phone calls, usually when your are eating, or worse still, foot-in-the-door salespeople, all of whom are singing the praises of some service or other, but in my view, lacking any real hard data to back their claims.

Them: 'Oh, yes sir, on a house this size, I'd expect to shave £60/year of your combined heating and lighting bill'.

Me: 'Well it just so happens that I've got the last two year's meter readings handy - perhaps you could be more specific!'

Exit salesperson, looking in earnest for someone WITHOUT two year's readings.

Before I get started, I'll confess that I did change from separate gas and electricity suppliers to NPower for both, but using my readings, not some rule of thumb. The whole deal looked like saving about £40/year at the rates in force at the time of changing. Then British Gas upset my own particular applecart by dropping their standing charge completely. I'm a relatively low user, 'on the cusp' as it were, between benefiting from a lower unit charge (plus a standing charge), and a higher unit charge (without a standing charge). The door-to-door people can't (or won't) grasp this break-even principle.

According to my figures it was now looking like I'd changed suppliers for about £10/year, which was hardly worth the effort and potential hassle, although I didn't actually get any, thank God! It would appear that throwing your lot in with ANY supplier to get the 'dual-fuel' discount is the most significant saving. I could have stayed with BG, and got my 'lecky' through them, or with Southern Electric, having them supply my gas. That's where the major saving seems to lie.

Therefore, it was with some curiosity that I followed a link through to www.uswitch.com
, a website specialising in pointing you in the right direction in this deregulated world. It doesn't stop at energy suppliers either. Landline phone service, cell-phones and digital TV get the treatment too.

I searched in vain in the 'About Us' section, but there was no hint that they have any vested interests or worse still, are a wholly owned subsidiary of 'Foot-In-The-Door plc', unlike the car insurance search site, www.confused.com who just so happen to be part of Admiral/Elephant.

USING THE SITE

Let's just suppose you are in the market for a change of energy supplier.

The first screen merely asks you to complete your UK postcode. I assume that this would preclude certain suppliers.

At the second screen, you need to know who your existing gas and electricity suppliers are, how you pay them (quite often there is a further discount for agreeing to direct debiting) and what your particular payment plan is called.

At the third screen, you are really are put on your mettle.

For each utility, you are required to click on one of 4 choices.

a) I know my Monthly/Annual spend - in theory, this should be enough, but just supposing that your monthly payments are currently too high or low - then what? This happens frequently when a utility is 'getting to know' your usage, a.k.a. 'guessing in their favour'.

b) I know my Annual Kilowatt Hours usage - This has to be the way forward, if you don't want to get led down the wrong path and is not as daunting as it at first appears, since the difference between one year's electricity meter reading and the next IS your KWH usage for one year. However, the gas reading isn't so easy, and the annual difference in readings needs converting by a formula including the 'declared calorific value' of the gas over that period. It CAN be done, and in the interests of accuracy, I would persevere. Detail
s of the conversion are frequently found in the small print at the bottom of, or overleaf on your statement. Calculators at the ready! The NPower bill has a clearly documented sequence of calculations that you can follow on its reverse, showing you how to convert a cubic measurement (cu ft or cu mtrs) into KWH.

c) I know my quarterly bill - as dodgy as a) if used as a source of hard data. At the very least, you really need to look at all 4 quarters, and average them out. After all, using your winter quarter's figures would be in stark contrast to the summer quarter.

d) I have no details handy - frankly, some of the savings to be had are so small, that if d) is 'you', then I wouldn't proceed until the details are 'handy'. Maybe this could be your cue to start taking regular readings of your own before making a big mistake.

Having made your choice, you are asked to nominate your preferred means of payment. Allowing a company to make a variable direct debit is cheapest for them, and offers the most hope for the saving to you being maximised.

Then come the search options. These allow you to choose from Price, Service Level and 'Green*' Credentials, the latter only applying to Electricity companies. Gas companies can only be viewed as plunderers of the earth's finite resources, I guess.

Of course, most will go straight for the jugular and choose 'Price', but it makes an interesting comparison to opt for 'Green' as a separate exercise.

*There are some electricity companies that promise to supply only from renewable resources. At the moment of course, they struggle to compete, but the more people that sign up, the more money there will be for renewable resource development, like wave power, wind power, and local wood-burning stations. Of course, you can do your own bit for the environment by cutting back on usage, condensing gas boilers and economy light bulbs being t
wo cases in point. Who knows, you may become a lower user like me, where it doesn't matter who supplies you!

In my case, having accurate figures to input, my choice of N-Power was more or less vindicated. At least they appeared in the top five cheapest suppliers for my level of usage. The four above only differed by about £20/annum and quite frankly, having gone through the process on changing over, plus the begging letters and phone calls from the losing end, I'm not about to do it again.

However, if you've yet to make the move, give it a go - what have you got to lose, except perhaps your sanity? There are some pretty complex mathematical algorithms needed to process this information - I know, I've tried it in MS Excel.

For example, when I last checked, BG had different unit prices depending on whether you had gone over a particular threshold of usage per quarter, not per annum. So, if all your gas was used in winter, then you arrived at one price, but if its consumption was spread through the year, you ended up with a different set of figures.

You get the impression that the utilities have tried to make comparisons next to impossible, so thank you ww.uswitch.com for being there.

OTHER UTILITIES

OK, this is about making a decision to change energy suppliers, but since the site offers other facilities, I've looked into those as well and as a result, I have some issues and concerns. Kilowatt/hours are one thing, phone call destinations and frequency thereof are another.

It therefore follows that any information they give you on cell-phone or land-line usage is possibly going to be a bit more hit and miss, leaning rather too heavily, in my view, on rules-of-thumb.

The main problem is that there is no means of quantifying usage as with meter readings. Yes, I know that BT lines have meter readings, but one unit can mean many things, rather than just one KWH. For example, one un
it could be a longish local call or only a few seconds of an international call.

Sure they ask you what (BT) tariff you have, and whether you use another carrier for international calls, but that's about as accurate as it gets. To be fair, the site does attempt to get you to pin down your usage pattern, but this information is hardly easy to quantify.

I had little faith in the resultant league table because it included Telewest, which I have already proven to my own satisfaction to be dearer at £25/month (for me anyway) than my BT package at £24/month including Caller Display, which is extra to Telewest's £25. Also they overestimated my current BT usage by £80/annum, so that's another nail in the coffin of the site's street cred.

Cell-phones are a similar case. I only pay O2 (the former Cellnet) £7/month with 100 minutes included on a 15-month deal. Because my only choices were Low User or Emergency User, it assumed that PAYG was my only option, estimating my monthly calls to account for £9 worth of charges. It obviously isn't equipped with all known tariffs, and as such, may not be the answer to your prayers. Of course, if you're starting from scratch with no idea yourself, then at least this site would guide you in the right direction.

Should you feel like letting loose on Digital TV options, then the site is little more than a Shopping Engine. In asking for your postcode, it will make sure that your local cable company is NTL or Telewest, but not both. The Q&A process is quite simple.

Do you want to pay as little as possible? Yes? Get Digital Terrestrial, which only needs a licence fee.

Do want a wider entertainment package? Yes? Then forget DTT and get either Sky or your local cable.

OK, they do also give you price comparisons, but what I said about suppliers trying to muddy the waters is never truer than here. On the face of it, Telewest looks expensive compared to Sky, bu
t follow the link to 'Extras', and you will find that Telewest include the cost of a basic phone line in their tariff.

CONCLUSIONS

How IS a lad to choose, eh?

Perhaps what we need is a battle of super-utilities that can supply ANYTHING - now that would be some algorithm - and what a talking point in the pub.

'Oh, aye, I get my TV from Scottish Hydro, y'know! Sky are supplying the gas via satellite and my electricity is coming out of my phone socket (but don't try this at home!)'

Pity someone's already got the name www.confused.com; it would have suited this site much better!

The energy supplier section is excellent if used properly, the telecomms sections are 'curate's egg' and the digital TV section doesn't really tell you much that a visit to Telewest or NTL and Sky's web sites wouldn't tell you

Don't forget, the GIGO principle applies, i.e. Garbage In = Garbage Out. The more bills and evidence you can amass, the more likely this site is to guide you down the right road. If you haven't got the faintest idea, then it's 'wet finger in the air' time, or should that be 'foot-in-the-door' time again?

p.s. very few of the ratings below relate to this web-site

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