How change your Gas and Electricity supplier

To swap your gas and electricity supplier is simple and should take only a few moments to complete. Please see below for our guide and tips.

Finding the best deal on your Gas and Electricity Provider

• Gather together your last three or four gas and electricity bills together. Quickly add up the total you have spent or work out how many units of gas and units of electricity you have used.
• Important Tip – Use a winter and a summer bills so you have a good balanced average of your energy usage.
• Look to see how you pay your bill, remember that monthly direct debit this is the cheapest way to pay your gas and electricity bills, savings can be as much as £20 a month.
• Consider the following when changing your supplier.

• Price; if you are swapping energy providers to save money then this is fundamental of course. You want to find for a supplier that is cheaper than your current one and if possible go for the biggest savings. Recent findings for the influential Which? Magazine, one of the biggest independent product review companies in the world, recommended the Utility Warehouse as their overall Best Buy winner.
• You should also research the Customer Service Ratings for your choice of energy supplier as some UK energy suppliers have better/worse customer service ratings than others. Customer service ratings are derived from aggregating the statistics collected by Consumer Focus. http://www.consumerfocus.org.uk. Again The Utility Warehouse triumphed as top dog here to with almost twice the positive customer ratings of some of the biggest providers.
• Ensure your new provider has an Online Account Facility. Only some of the UK’s energy suppliers have this. It’s a great asset , allowing you to manage your account over the Internet , submit meter readings and get paperless billing if you wish.
• Remember that if you have a prepayment meter you will need to get your existing supplier to physically change the meter before you can swap. It should not cost you anything to do and will only take an hour if that.  Prepayment meters are the most expensive type of way to pay for your gas and electricity so get off this type of provision as soon as you can.

Once you have chosen who you want to supply you the following is a guide to what to do next:

• You will need you mpan and mprn numbers. They might sound a bit odd but these are the numbers the new energy supplier will need to know where to send the gas and electricity to. These can be found on your bill and often on the meter. Your new supplier will need your bank details for the direct debit.
• If you have chosen to manage your account online ensure you have an email address to be able to log into the supplier.

What to do after you have switched Energy Supplier

Once you have completed one of our online forms to change your gas and electricity supplier there are a few simple things you can do to ensure it all goes smoothly:

• First be aware of your rights to cancel and change you mind. Under UK regulation you have ONE FULL WEEK to change your mind from the date of your application so you have 100% peace of mind.
• When you get the confirmation of when your new supply will start, ensure you take meter readings so you can give these to both your old and new gas and electricity suppliers. This ensures you only pay for the power you have used. Its simple to do
• Pay your outstanding gas and electricity bills when the final bill arrived remembering to check the reading on the statement against your own records. If you have overpaid during your time with your current energy supply you will get this money back.

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BetterBills.net recommends this BBC News report.

The company said its 1.6 million domestic gas customers would save an average of £66 a year on their bills.
In addition, 60,000 customers who have been identified as vulnerable and who heat their homes with electricity are to get a £50 rebate.
On Wednesday, EDF Energy said it was reducing its residential gas prices by 4%, the second cut in six months.
Energy suppliers have been criticised for not passing on cuts in wholesale oil and gas prices to customers.
Wholesale gas prices dropped sharply from February 2009, and domestic prices dropped in the spring.
Scottish Power’s director of energy retail, Raymond Jack, said: “Typically, less than 60% of a bill is now based on wholesale costs.
“Investment, government obligations and the delivery of energy to the home make up a significant portion of our bills.”
Source: BBC
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British Gas cut its gas prices for domestic customers recently

Scottish and Southern Energy will cut its gas bills for domestic customers by 4% from 29 March, the company has announced.

The average annual household bill will drop by £30 as a result, the energy provider said.

The move comes a month after British Gas cut its standard household gas prices by an average of 7%, and others are expected to follow suit.

The changes come after a period of lower wholesale costs.

The company said that its average dual fuel standard credit bill would stand at £1,162, although prices alter depending on where people live in the country.

‘Challenging business’

Scottish and Southern has 3.5 million gas customers but nearly 10 million customers across the UK who use gas or electricity or both. Electricity prices will remain unchanged.

We will never get back down to levels enjoyed a few years ago Tom Lyon, Uswitch

It supplies gas and electricity as Southern Electric, SWALEC, Scottish Hydro, and Atlantic.

Those customers who have relatively low gas usage will not see the full effect of the price cuts. Fixed charges – the initial charge for the first tranche of gas used – will increase from £53 to £98. Prices will be cut for gas used above this level, leaving a net effect of a 4% cut for the average customer.

“Energy supply is still a challenging business, with significant upward price pressures which run counter to reductions in wholesale costs,” said Alistair Phillips-Davies, the company’s energy supply director.

“We will do everything we can to make sure customers get value for money from energy supply, with energy efficiency and customer service continuing to be top priorities.”

The company has also followed demands from the regulator and consumer groups by removing the price differential for pre-payment gas meters.

Pre-payment meter customers will see their annual bill fall by 9%, or £70 a year on average.

“This is a great day for social justice and means that almost 300,000 people, many of whom are on lower incomes, will now find it easier to pay for their energy and heat their homes,” said David Orr, of chief executive of the National Housing Federation.

Single fuel gas rates will fall by 7%, or £56 a year on average, moving single fuel gas prices in line with dual fuel.

Other suppliers

Gas providers have come under pressure to cut bills after prices that they pay on the wholesale markets fell.

The latest moves by Scottish and Southern and British Gas should push the others in the “big six” energy suppliers into cutting prices, according to Tom Lyon, energy expert at price comparison websites.

“Hopefully the other four will follow shortly, which can only be good for customers,” he said.

“But we will never get back down to levels enjoyed a few years ago.”

The falling prices were still relatively small compared with the increases across the market in 2008, he said, and there was little likelihood of any drop in electricity prices.

Robert Hammond, energy expert at watchdog Consumer Focus said: “This is good news and hopefully will spark the price war that has been conspicuous by its absence since British Gas cut its gas bills last month.

“Wholesale gas and electricity prices have been falling for months and we believe price cuts for both should have been passed on before the winter started.”

But Mark Todd, director of website energyhelpline.com, criticised the delay on the price changes, as British Gas had announced its cut with immediate effect.

He also warned that “some [energy] companies may not cut prices at all”.

Although the price of wholesale gas is down 60% on record 2008 highs British gas have only cut their prices by 7% AND today announced this :- 

Operating profits at British Gas jumped by 58% in 2009 to a record high, its parent company Centrica has said.

The gas firm’s residential energy arm saw its operating profit climb to £595m last year from £376m in 2008, beating the previous high of £573m in 2007.

Coincidence ???

As another year come to a close Betterbills.net has grown from strength to strength with huge increases in the number of visitors to our site as well as more and more people taking the opportunity in these troubled times to switch providers.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the following companies for their continued support throughout 2009:- www.noteservice2010.com , www.cheap-electric-bills.info , www.electricity-warehouse.com , www.gas-warehouse.co.uk www.cheaper-electric.com , www.theutilityblog.com , www.cheap-phone-bills.info www.cheapergasbills.info , www.cheap-utilities.info , www.electricity-bills.info , www.segra.org , www.gas-cheaper.info www.cheaper-gas-and-electric-bills.com . We appreciate you recommending our products and services and hope to maintain your trust throughout 2010 and beyond.

Also I would like to thank team at Voodoo for all their help ,plus John Williams at Gozygo , Sam Goodwyn at  Rrzoo Directory for all their backlinks and Jenny Prior from Blue Orbit for helping with our first ever seminar in June. Lastly thanks to our SEO workers at link bidder and April24 for working so hard to keep our online presence high in the rankings..

This week the Queen has outlined an energy bill which could produce cheaper gas and electricity prices in her annual speech to parliament.

If passed into law, the bill will give Ofgem more influence to control the service energy companies provide their customers. It will also give it greater powers to fine businesses for wrongdoing.

Originally the bill, which will apply to England, Scotland and Wales, was introduced in parliament in 2008. The aim is to provide “secure, clean and affordable energy” as well as reduce the country’s carbon emission.

It is also hoped that the bill will provide more protection for consumers, particularly those on low incomes who require help paying their gas and electricity bills.

The news should be welcomed by consumer groups, a number of which have been calling for energy companies to reduce their prices and pass profits back to their customers. Yesterday the charity National Energy Action called for low cost gas and electricity to become a national priority as it launched its annual Warm Homes Campaign.

Today it was announced that Consumer focus is backing claims for an investigation into the big six energy firms not passing on wholesale savings to their customers.

The comments come after many MPs called for a Competition Commission investigation into whether the firms are passing on price cuts in wholesale gas and electricity to the public.

Calls have been made in the past from Consumer Focus for energy suppliers to cut their costs and give their customers cheaper gas and electricity. It argues that customers are not getting a fair deal.

Robert Hammond, from Consumer Focus, said: “A truly competitive market would ensure that when energy companies pay less to supply energy, customers pay less to receive it. Yet none of the big six energy companies are breaking ranks and passing on lower wholesale costs to their mainstream customers.”

Research conducted by the consumer group estimated that the price of gas and electricity could be reduced by 7.4 per cent and 3.1 per cent respectively based on prices in June 2009.

The Citizens Advice Bureau recommends that one way to reduce your energy bills is by comparing energy prices and switching gas and electricity supplier.

Here is a copy of an email I had sent to me this week from a friend who had a nightmare with British Gas. Luckily he sorted his issues out and changed supplier..

He said….

If you sent someone a letter in which you threatened them with breaking into their homes because they hadn’t paid a bill that you hadn’t actually bothered to send them, the courts would take a somewhat dim view of you. Yet that appears to be a perfectly acceptable element of British Gas’s working model and they’re able to get away with it.

I had a disconnection letter from them this week, warning of me of the “severe consequences” which this most arrogant of corporate bullies was about to inflict. This included getting a warrant to enter my premises and then charging me £361 for the privilege. I was slightly disappointed that they seem to have removed the line that used to be on some of their correspondence about getting the police to break into my property on their behalf – possibly the police have decided they’re not so keen on being seen as British Gas’s private lynch mob for hire?

The thing that puzzled me was I didn’t recall seeing a bill or reminder. I checked my files and correspondence and sure enough there had been no bill sent. I called the phone number on the disconnection letter and spoke to someone in an Indian call centre who told me that of course there was no paper bill as I had asked for paperless billling. Now, I most emphatically had not. I have no form of paperless billing from any utilities supplier. Point of petty principle on my part, I want a bit of paper for my records, so I knew she was talking rot. I told her this was not the case and we embarked on the tediously inevitable round of ‘computer says you have so therefore you have’.

Then she told me that in order to stop having paperless bills and start receiving paper bills, I needed to log back in using the name and password I had used to register for paperless billing (“I haven’t registered for paperless billing!” I shouted). I asked her how I could use these login details as I’d never signed up in the first place and as such had no idea what they were supposed to be. She couldn’t help me sir as that would break the Data Protection Act. Ah, yes, the other great British Gas standby – when computer says no doesn’t work any more, claim it’s a matter of Data Protection and all for your own good, sir, now please get knotted.

I asked for a supervisor. She put the phone down. I called back, went through the whole routine again, and this time a male call centre person put the phone down when I asked for a supervisor. This was not a matter that warranted a supervisor, he told me. I am a customer making a complaint, but that’s not something that warrants a supervisor’s attention, I asked. Not in his view, he said, and put the phone down.

I called back for a third time and went through the whole routine again. This time I asked for a number to call to make a complaint. This was grudgingly given out, but only after several requests. This time I put the phone down (a minor psychological victory!) and I called the complaints number and got through….to a dead line!

I called back again on a different British Gas number and finally got through to a UK call centre. The guy on the phone this time was a bit more helpful and admitted he was baffled by the whole thing. I asked him to put me through to the complaints department. He said there wasn’t a number he could put me through to. I said the Indian call centre had given me a number to call, but it didn’t work. This didn’t see to surprise the UK guy – “That’s not a number I recognise.”

So, I asked, the Indian lot were just lying to get me off the phone by doling out some random number? He wasn’t about to be drawn on that one, but maybe it’s an interesting new British Gas customer relations policy? Fob ‘em off with a fake number and hope they’ll go away?. Anyway, he said, the only way to talk to British Gas about a complaint was to write to them by snail mail!!!

I can’t say I blame them. The number of complaints that this brutal thuggish company must generate in any working day must be more than any switchboard could ever hope to handle. How many customers will bother to go to the trouble to write a letter? There must be a fairly good chance they won’t which will help when claiming that customer complaints numbers are going down. Hurrah and big bonuses all round!

There really is a wider set of questions to be asked about British Gas and its atrocious attitude to its customers. The letters it sends out are aggressive and threateningly worded and must strike fear into the hearts of many customers who aren’t ready or willing or able to be as gobby as I am when faced with such shameless bullying.

When dealing with British Gas I feel I’m facing down a bunch of gangsters who are simply out to intimidate and demand money with menaces. You end up shouting and getting irate, but ultimately you’re powerless in the face of their universal indifference, downright incompetence and now it seems tactical misinformation.

If I behaved the way British Gas does to my own clients or sent out the kind of communications they do, I’d rightly be (a) earning no money and (b) potentially getting a visit from Plod. So how do they continue to get away with it?

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