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Chatting to them I asked if we were on the best tariff and they just said 'our prices are set by ofgem' before getting sniffy
Ofgem also tell them they have to write to you every year to tell you what you would be paying on whichever of their tariffs yielded the lowest bills based on your usage. I'd be surprised if they didn't also have to tell you on demand.
The switching/price comparison sites work as long as you give them the right info. You might want to run several scenarios if your usage is potentially volatile. Also clear your cookies and go direct to the sites of promising suppliers, as they may have deals not listed on comparison sites.
gbj_tester
How are utilities priced? Presumably, for the household market, there's a wholesaler selling to a retailer selling to a customer.
We're with E.on on 'Energy Plan' (receive a bill every quarter and pay within a month - generally these are 250ish but November to Feb was 900 quid which made me switch to a smart meter so I could better keep track of it).
They installed it at start of October and current reading seems accurate and happy to pay however because we'd been on estimated rather than actual reads we'd somehow been UNDERpaying for the previous year so as well as the 300 for the quarter, we've got another 200 to pay. Spoke to E.On to clear it up - it wasn't stated in the bill that the discrepancy was between estimated vs actual, they just said we'd used 2 months worth of fuel in the week between our last bill and getting the smart meters installed (we were away that week which is why it stuck out!). Fine, will pay, whatever.
Chatting to them I asked if we were on the best tariff and they just said 'our prices are set by ofgem' before getting sniffy and abruptly ending the call.
I've paid about 2.5K in duel fuel since July 2018 including VAT and standing charges etc.
uSwitch suggesting I could save up to 600 quid a year by switching. I'm trying to work out if that's likely or they're basing it on models we don't fit into so the price would be the same wherever we went (we're both at home all the time so heating is on a few hours in the day in the winter).