And you know the UK energy market is a can of worms mixed in with a tin of spaghetti all mixed in with a large, unravelled ball of wool.
It’s a huge mess and the job of comparing one supplier’s gas and electricity with another’s is just about impossible.
You can go to their sites because – obviously – that’s the best way to get their best deal, right? Wrong.
As Which? recently reported, for many of the big name energy suppliers the cheapest deal on their website isn’t the cheapest deal they have. Their best deals are hidden and used for other marketing purposes.
So we think, perhaps price comparison sites might be the best place to go – the best deals will be there, right? Not necessarily.
Comparison sites are so unreliable that The Citizens Advice Bureau’s own in-depth investigation into comparison site behaviour leads them to warn consumers to ‘use a number of different price comparison sites before committing to a product or service’.
In other words, we have to double-check the checkers because the checkers themselves need checking!
This is crazy. We’re not talking about a complex product that comes in a range of different grades or flavours or mixtures. There is only one type of gas and there is only one type of electricity.
It would be like going to Tesco to buy bananas and finding there’s 17 different prices for the same banana. We’d laugh at that because a banana is a banana – so just give me a single price, right?
So why is a dozen or more different prices, hidden tariffs, untrustworthy comparison sites, huge pricing disparities, a government regulator and a nation-wide distrust of scandalous malpractice a normal part of the energy market?
Why not price it at so many pence per unit and be done with it?
We think it takes genuine effort to make it this complex. After all, it’s not easy to create so many varied strands to the pricing of a single, simple commodity like gas or electricity.
Which makes us wonder if pricing complexity and comparison confusion is deliberate.
If customers are too baffled to really know if they’re getting a good deal – and they need spreadsheets and a maths degree to do their own comparisons – the industry is able to keep prices high across the board.
And we already know that the big energy companies have hundreds of thousands of customers on their books that are getting horrible pricing deals. This scandal is great for their profits, very bad for their victims customers.
Pricing gas and electricity can be as easy as pricing bananas.
Fortunately, with a handful of suppliers, it now is. And we’re on a mission to make sure you at least know about them.
Get in touch, tell us what you’re using and we’ll send some emails. What we come back with is the best, genuine price you can get.
It’ll be straight from the supplier with the cheapest possible commission for you to compare.
It’s only fair you know precisely what your utility broker is making from arranging your utility contracts. Plus, it’s not much of an effort. It only takes around 10 minutes to obtain a quote and a couple of hours or so to prepare a contact for your signature with your chosen supplier.
We make 99% of our revenue from providing Telecom services, so if you’d like to save some more money. We’d love the opportunity to discuss your requirements.
You take the deal or you don’t. We’re not selling it, just letting you know it’s there.
But it’s your benefit, your choice. We certainly won’t be pushing it.
Forth Windows & Doors is based in Glenrothes, Scotland and employs 30 staff. The company has been a Numbergroup customer since 2009.
OLD SUPPLIER & TARIFF British Gas Standing Charge: 151.311p per day Per Unit charge: 5.150p |
NEW SUPPLIER & TARIFF CNG Scottish Hydro Standing Charge: 0 Per Unit Charge: 2.309p |
Based on their Average usage, the Annual cost dropped from £24,549.48 to £10,759.13. That’s an incredible saving of £27,580.70 over their 2 year contract.