Advice on Energy suppliers
 

2 Things really , me and the missis have only lived in our first home for 6months so dont have a clue about all this,

We are with eon atm we have gas and electric our first quarterly bill has come £180 for the both , we dont have the heating on alot as its "summer". Does this sound right to anyone else? We live in a 2 Bedroom terrace house.


2nd thing whilst i was at the football watching forest , british gas came round trying to get us to do both with them. They said there electric is cheaper but there gas isnt but we hardly use any gas. He then mentioned something about price fixing for the next year and will send us a price pack.

Any advice about this price fixing thing and will i save anything?

1) Get shot of EON, their customer service is dire.
2) We pay £80 pcm for Gas and £60 pcm for Electric in a 3 bed detached, Gas CH and Hob. Electric is high due to the number of PC's running all the time (6).
3) Look on uSwitch.com: Search, switch & save on all your home services and financial products to switch supplier and see who is the cheapest. We went with Atlantic, second cheapest but excellent customer service rating (which I confirm).
4) Price fixing, you'll probably pay over the odds now, but if prices continue to rise over the next 2-5 years you may well be better off.
5) EON are offering an energy use analysis survey at the moment which may help you to reduce your usage. High efficiency light bulbs will be high on their list, but personally I hate them and think their an environmental disaster.

I keep hearing about Atlantic and how good they are, so I must consider them.

I don't think £180 for 3 months is that bad at all - I have a 3 bed semi and pay £65 a month for electricity and £37 a month for gas. I'm well in credit with gas at the moment because I've not had the central heating on for about 6 months, and I could probably get the electric down a bit but having two young children, the tumble dryer seems to be on all the time!

I'm not inclined to fix my prices at the moment because gas prices are linked to fuel prices, which are on the way down.

It seems to be a regular discussion at work now, how to save money on fuel bills and there's loads of advice all over the place (especially here ;))

£60 a month for gas and electric in the summer months isn't too bad but there are lots of variables to consider, firstly was it based on actual or estimated readings?
Do you pay by DD and have an online tarriff as they usually are the cheap way to work out whats what. As far as fixing is concerned if you want to expect to pay close to 25% more now in the hope it goes up by more than that over the fixed period. As said look on the comparrison sites but do check the actual rates as I'm still not convinced they don't prefer certain suppliers oh and personally BG are complete sheisters and wouldn't ever go back to them ever since having a problem and never being able to get through to them. To be told you are 200 plus in the queue repeatedly really irritated the hell out of me

my readings are actual, looking at everyone elses bill mine seems ok.

We pay when the bill comes through the door not a big fan of d/d.

I would say £180/qtr for the 'summer' is quite expensive for two people. But then we have had our heating on due to the low temperatures.

You will only really be able to tell after a complete year.

I am with British Gas (gas and electric, both). They kindly posted some free energy bulbs a couple of days ago (two 40W, two 60W) through the door as their goodwill gesture, and to make up for their guilt of increasing the bills. I am smirking at that!>:) At the same time, I don't know what the better options are to really make this whole energy price hike see it's @rse, apart from going solar. Going solar would mean some substantial investment. Pondering over it ATM :wonder:

Last time I looked, Solar has a 5 - 10 year payback, which is a long time and that is with government subsidies.

Steve

Hang-on am i missing summat ..confused:

Norf Wales no sun, too much wind :wonder:

How exactley are low energy bulbs an environmental disaster :wonder:

It is a long time, Steve.

Not missing anything, you!:D Again, your wires are kinda crossing and sparking sporadically as usual. :lol1: ;)

Not that I haven't thought about no sun and too much wind situation. That is applicable to all of the Britain, isn't it? But giving the solar systems a bit more credibility, it may be possible to save some money on energy, if you know what I mean? :D We have a local company called Allbrite that are taking a great pride in introducing/installing some very efficient solar systems (tested and proven).

Look>

Hence the deliberation over that option.

Had the chance to purchase ahouse with solar installed a year ago

What a total clutz i am for not taking it :cuckoo:


- it supplied all the hot water you could use ,especially this time of year

Who sank your boat to look for houses, Duncan? :confused: LOL seriously, did you finally get rid of it?

Seems like Brighton as not as bright as it sounds :wonder: This time of the year still remains quite humid but warm in N. Wales with hardly any need for heating, except for water.

I also received some free bulbs,some free electricity to power them would have been more welcome:D

Too right!

On the other hand, we should count ourselves lucky.

The package could have easily contained two little rocks to spark fire, like the caveman (and the cavewoman) did in stone age, as an energy saving solution. :D