Last year, when I compared energy prices, E.On was predicted to be only about £20 per year more expensive than the cheapest supplier. Hardly worth bothering, I reckoned. This year, though, in spite of falling energy prices, E.On have chosen to raise their tariffs, which seemed a little odd. I suppose though, that if you are losing customers to cheaper-priced competitors, it makes business sense to raise your prices and maintain profits at the expense of your remaining customer base, rather than cut your prices for everyone.
Interestingly, when E.On learned of my imminent departure, they emailed to emphasise how much I was saving through their Dual Fuel Allowance, Direct Debit payments and Fixed Term Contract. Not a word about the actual cost of gas or electricity in terms of kW/hour.
All the Cost Comparison sites I tried came up with similar results. Here's MoneySupermarket.com's offering —
The top 5 are not rated highly for customer service – some because they've only just arrived in the market place – so, for about £23 extra, I chose First Utility. I'm still feeling bruised from a dust-up with EDF's super-inefficient customer services and don't relish a repeat. None-the-less, a potential saving of £242 in the coming year isn't at all bad. Au Revoir, E.On.
On thing the nice people from E.On did do, a couple of year ago, was to install a Smart Meter, or rather two Smart meters (gas and electricity) and a readout device. Here's the gas end of the business...
... and here's the thingamajig for reading it.
Yes, that is the Book of Common Prayer next to it. The collect for The Conversion of St Paul seems more than a little appropriate —
Grant, we beseech Thee, that we, having his wonderful conversion in remembrance...
Well this wonderful conversion from E.On to First Utility will entail an engineer coming to remove E.On's gas and electricity smart meters and substitute First Utility's own equally smart ones.
Am I the only person who finds this a bit daft? If I get a taste for swapping energy suppliers (as I already have for home and car insurers) will someone come here every year or so to install new 'smart' meters and take away the old ones? Or perhaps, one day, some smart person will invent a truly smart meter that reprograms itself, each time I swap suppliers? For a race of beings that can land a rover on Mars and invent Dairy Spread, that doesn't seem too big a problem, does it? Though, now I think about it, whoever invented Dairy Spread has a lot to answer for.
That was one of the objections to a general roll-out of these smart meters. That every time you swap suppliers you get a new meter. What a potential waste of money on hardware.
ReplyDeleteI haven't got one. I just take gas and electrical meter readings every week that I'm home, and monitor consumption that way, recording the figures on a spreadsheet week by week. I've rigged it to show me on the spreadsheet how the units consumed convert into money. It seems to reflect spells of warm or cold weather (and other variables) pretty usefully.
Lucy
I may have been tempted to do likewise, were it not for the electricity meter being positioned outside the house - in a rather inaccessible spot, behind a bush. No problem for most of the year, but right now it's much easier to reach up to my smart thingy and press a button.
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