Electricity Supplier Switch

[GarethWhyte]

Hello All,

Due to collect my long range on Tuesday the 15th getting super excited!

Currently use British Gas for both Gas and Electricity and paying 3.23p and 17.79p respectively with standing charges off 24.35p and 21.97p

Is that massive more then the going rate? Can anyone recommend a good supplier? I’m working from him at the moment so using electricity during the day with a direct debit of £70 a month

Thanks in advance

Gareth

 

[twlr]

Hello All,

Due to collect my long range on Tuesday the 15th getting super excited!

Currently use British Gas for both Gas and Electricity and paying 3.23p and 17.79p respectively with standing charges off 24.35p and 21.97p

Is that massive more then the going rate? Can anyone recommend a good supplier? I’m working from him at the moment so using electricity during the day with a direct debit of £70 a month

Thanks in advance

Gareth

I'd strongly suggest looking in to Octopus Agile. Their rate differs every 30 mins depending on demand which means over night it gets quite cheap, so a great time to use lots of electricity to charge an EV for example. I can also send your a referral link where we can both get £50 credit.

I'm also on a really good gas deal with Utility Point - 13.65p per day and 2.38p per kWh. I can also send you my referral details for them and we'd both get £100 credit.

 

[Alex987854]

You could also look at octopus go. 5p a kwh for four hours overnight. Day rate varies, so have a look at their website for a quote. You also get £50 towards your bill if you sign up with a referral code (one in my profile, and plenty more on offer from others on here) I'm just trying to hunt down the thread with the handy calculator and I'll edit to add it.

Edit: found it
Find out how much it costs to charge your Tesla in the UK, take 5!

 

[init6]

Where you live, how much energy you use (gas and electric), when you use the electricity, how long and how often you need to charge your car are all factors in getting the best price.
For example a lot of the EV tariffs give cheap electricity overnight at the expense of more costly electricity during the day. If you use a lot outside of these low cost periods then you may end up paying more than you need to.

Best to start with one of the comparison websites and use your actual usage for last year to get the most accurate figures. Be careful though as some of the sites estimate you usage, so always put in your actual usage if you can.

DM me if you get stuck as I've just pulled together a spreadsheet that I used to renew recently.

 

[Rooster6655]

I strongly don’t recommend octopus their support is useless, been a pain since the start, first took 6 months for a meter then the meter stopped updating and been waiting for 3 months for a reply.

 

[MJR-VR]

I strongly don’t recommend octopus their support is useless, been a pain since the start, first took 6 months for a meter then the meter stopped updating and been waiting for 3 months for a reply.

Agreed Octopus staff really don't care once you have signed up. If you do have a problem down the line you are on your own.
I think they have a competition behind the scenes as to who can ignore someone the longest.

 

[Glan gluaisne]

I strongly don’t recommend octopus their support is useless, been a pain since the start, first took 6 months for a meter then the meter stopped updating and been waiting for 3 months for a reply.

Mirrors my experience with them. Nothing would induce me to ever go back to Octopus, no matter what their offering is, as the memories of them getting our billing wrong for months, always massively in their favour, and the extreme pain and grief in trying to get the money back after we ditched them, are still strong. They made British Gas customer service look very good indeed.

The supplier that was mentioned in another thread recently, Symbio, are currently pretty cheap, their cheapest standard tariff, at 10.8p/kWh plus 21p/day is even cheaper than Economy 7, and that's extremely unusual, as we use more electricity overnight than we do during the day.

 

[Fred2]

Find out how much it costs to charge your Tesla in the UK, take 5! Has a handy spreadsheet with loads of inputs, different tariffs etc. Personally I’ve had a good experience with octopus, some issues but they were decent enough about sorting things out. Depends on region etc but nearly 18p/kWh feels expensive.

 

[ACarneiro]

Mirrors my experience with them. Nothing would induce me to ever go back to Octopus, no matter what their offering is, as the memories of them getting our billing wrong for months, always massively in their favour, and the extreme pain and grief in trying to get the money back after we ditched them, are still strong. They made British Gas customer service look very good indeed.

The supplier that was mentioned in another thread recently, Symbio, are currently pretty cheap, their cheapest standard tariff, at 10.8p/kWh plus 21p/day is even cheaper than Economy 7, and that's extremely unusual, as we use more electricity overnight than we do during the day.

I believe Symbio had also been stopped by Ofgem from taking on new customers due to poor customer service? Personally I’d stay well clear.
If the good ones are as bad as they are, I dread to think what the bad ones are like...

 

[twlr]

Reading that thread someone even mentioned that they reported Symbio to the ombudsman!

Everyone has different experiences and ultimately you need to decide whether cost, customer service, green credentials, or anything else is important to you then choose the appropriate supplier. For me it's cost so Octopus and Utility Point are the best ones for me for electricity and gas respectively.

With Octopus my experience has been positive; the switch was simple and I was on the agile tariff within a few days of switching to them. When I emailed them a question they replied within a few days and fixed the issue. And my bills are already cheaper than my old supplier as I can tailor my usage to the cheaper times.

 

[ACarneiro]

I agree. For me (with solar and Powerwalls), the 5p/kWh from Octopus go is unbeatable so it’s worth putting up with the teething issues (maddening as they may be).
In fairness to Octopus, their CS is all in the UK (easy to understand), their staff are lovely and I think my problems are mostly due to the moronic smart meter rollout/setup...
We shall see if my future dealings with them don’t mimic @Glan gluaisne ’s experience (that sounded particularly infuriating).

 

[Glan gluaisne]

It seems that Symbio got into trouble for not fitting smart meters, according to this thread: Symbio Energy Tariff

Customer service from Bulb was excellent, for all the time we were with them. Green energy seem OK so far, but it's early days yet, we only recently switched. They offer a pretty good Economy 7 tariff in this area, almost the cheapest off-peak rate plus a relatively low standing charge.

 

[exlatccatsa]

I've never had any prolems with Octopus. Emails are replied to usually within 24 hrs and certainly within 48 hrs. Phone calls are answered quickly. The smart meter was a pain .. but it was requested in February and fitted in August (no fittings between March and July to Covid) when I asked how long it would take and if I could change from fixed Green to Tracker the backdated the change to January when I joined and I saved £120. I don't know any other supplier that would do that voluntarily.

 

[Medved_77]

In my personal experience, after being with Octopus for 9 months, they have been the best energy supplier I've ever used.

I haven't really needed to test their traditional customer service, I had an existing smart meter which they obtained meter readings from automatically from the first day of the switch without any intervention on my part. My first bill was a little bit delayed however they responded quickly to my email requesting this to be generated.

Where Octopus differ to most other energy suppliers is in their technical capabilities. Opening up new channels of communication via their API so that you can understand your consumption and prices at 30 minute intervals is very useful for keeping track of costs. Spurring a marketplace for 3rd party applications which can combine the use of the Tesla API with the Octopus API to ensure your car always charges at the cheapest available rates is something that I don't believe any other energy providers provide and personally, has saved me a lot of money.

On an environmental level, being able to understand when are good times and bad times to consume electricity to reduce carbon emissions is also I believe unique to Octopus.

No doubt they've had growing pains due to the huge interest in their tariffs and their unfortunately reliance on 3rd parties to install smart meters on their behalf. I don't dispute that some customers may not receive the experience they deserve but I do believe that there's no other UK company that offers the same level of integration or technical interaction with their customers.

I haven't researched how independent the Uswitch awards are but this year Octopus have won awards for; Best Customer Service, Best Online Experience, Easiest to Switch to and were runners up for best value for money. Which? awarded Octopus 'Utilities brand of the year' in 2019. There's a which review here which states Octopus Energy came top out of 35 energy companies rated by 7,355 members of the public.

Finally, in terms of pricing, and the Agile tariff in particular, I don't think there's anything that can beat it. My average price for the last 12 months, in the South Scotland region are as follows:

Average all day Unit Price - 9.27p
Average of the cheapest 4 hours from each day - 4.62p
Average excluding peak (4pm-7pm) - 7.35p
Average peak (4pm-7pm) - 23.78p

Source: Grafana

 

[Glan gluaisne]

Finally, in terms of pricing, and the Agile tariff in particular, I don't think there's anything that can beat it.

Depends a great deal on your personal pattern of use through the day, as I've mentioned before. I cannot get either Go or Agile to be as cheap as Economy 7, although it was getting pretty close with Agile, until a couple of weeks ago. The Symbio tariff (not the E7 one) is pretty close to the best E7 tariff at the moment, too, which seems remarkable.

To be able to compare between suppliers, when looking at some of the flexible smart tariffs, means knowing accurately how much electricity you use for every 30 minute slot. I have this data for a few years, which makes it possible (but not exactly easy) to compare Agile to other tariffs, and so far it is consistently more expensive for us. The reason is that we've already load-shifted as much as we can into the overnight 7 hour off-peak period, plus our usage during the daytime always falls in the period when Agile prices are very high, sometimes over 30p/kWh. Nothing we can do about this, unless we switch to not having hot meals.

Unless you know exactly when during the day you use most electricity, it's impossible to predict whether a tariff like Agile will be cheaper or more expensive than other tariffs. To some extent, Octopus are marketing Agile based on the fact that few customers will yet have enough data to make such a detailed analysis, it seems that many are quite prepared to ignore the high peak prices and are, perhaps, seduced by the occasional very low off-peak prices. It's good marketing by Octopus, for sure. They have managed to get a great deal of free advertising from all those enthusiastically tracking the next low price event on forums such as this.

This variable pricing bubble should come to an end once it's served its purpose, though. Right now it's driving the deployment of battery storage at wind and solar farms, and a few other locations. Sooner or later the peak to dip ratio will end up as it is in some other places, like parts of the USA, where demand can be near-constant each day, with little or no daytime to night time variation. Once this happens, as has happened in some parts of the USA, smart meters will become redundant and we'll revert back to fixed tariffs, as they've done.

 

[Medved_77]

Depends a great deal on your personal pattern of use through the day, as I've mentioned before.

Yes - my summation is entirely from my personal experiences.

 

[init6]

One other thing I forget to mention. There is a financial incentive for people to recommend suppliers such as Octopus who offer referral codes. If you sign up to Octopus and use one of the codes, then the referrer gets money off their bill. As said above it's a good marketing tactic. While I'm not suggesting anyone would deliberately mislead you in order to get £50 off their bill, unconscious bias must be playing a part there (otherwise Octopus wouldn't do it)

 

[Pink Duck]

I've yet to find an EV specific tariff that is worth switching to as opposed to the standard approach of using comparison sites based on known energy consumption pattern to get the optimal low cost outcome, which is often 100% renewable electricity and in my case (with Pure Planet) 100% carbon-offset gas.

 

[DaveW]

A lot of the complaints about Octopus in the other thread seem to be about smart meters (although it sounds like they need to be better about getting back to people when they do have issues at times). The smart meter issues can and will plague the other suppliers too, as it's mostly out of their control.

I've just moved from Bulb to Octopus, Bulb installed a smart meter for me, this worked for a few months then stopped. They then tried to do something from the back end, when that didn't work, they simply told me there was nothing they could do and at some point in the future I'd get a software update that would fix it (refused to send an engineer).

Octopus sent an engineer out, he's now got it working again, half tempted to reply to the Bulb emails I had letting them know what fixed it... so for me, Octopus have already been a lot better than Bulb, I might not have bothered changing to Octopus if Bulb hadn't have been so useless with me.

The calculator thread I've made has been posted a couple of times (direct link is here: Tesla Cost to charge calculator) as much as I'd obviously like people to use my code for Octopus, depending on circumstances, some of the other tariffs seem to get more clicks through than Octopus, so hopefully it's fairly impartial, also space for you to enter another tariff too, that way you can work out what works best for you.

 

[Philip P]

Octopus customer care is appalling, but it's no worse than any of the other suppliers. I switched to them in September with the promise that they will fit a smart meter and switch me to the Go tariff ASAP. They are now saying that, I live in one of the few areas of the country that doesn't have network coverage (whatever that is) so there is no point installing a smart 2 meter until there is network coverage. So i can't get the 5p per k/W rate, but my night time rate is 9.85p per k/W, which is still lower than anywhere else I've found; plus they just agreed to give me £40 credit, so I guess thats not too bad.