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For most people, the prospect of assessing the best deals amongst energy suppliers is not exciting. It is necessary for us to choose a supplier for electricity and gas but I imagine most people spend as little time as possible thinking about it. This is exactly what the large energy suppliers want us to do, of course. Their strategy is to capitalise on our inertia or lack of interest to keep us as customers when we would be better off finding a great deal with one of their competitors.
Switching Energy Suppliers
Typically what happens is this, we are attracted by a good 12 month deal advertised online and sign up for it. When the initial 12 months are over, we have become accustomed to logging in to a particular account and receiving communication from one company. As the renewal date approached our existing supplier offers us a chance to renew with their ‘best offer’ for you. In most cases, this best offer is not a good deal and the price will rise if you accept it. Many people do accept it because it seems convenient.
What Should you do?
When you receive your pending renewal communication from your existing supplier, make a note of amount of your current direct debit and energy usage for electricity and/or gas and visit a comparison website. I went through this process yesterday, as I do each year, the website I used for comparison is called uSwitch, you could also try moneysupermarket.com. Allow yourself around 10 minutes to input some details about your existing supplier and contract and then the website will present you with the best choices for your energy supply and you can select one. My selection of new supplier meant that I will save £110 on my energy usage over the next 12 months.
Most people I have spoken to about this are aware of these websites but do not make a habit of visiting them each year. This is exactly what you should do to the best value for money deals. The same also applies for other categories including car insurance and home insurance.
The comparison websites I have highlighted are based in the UK because I live in the UK. If you live in another part of the world please use similar comparison websites to achieve the same results. I would be interested to know some of those websites and which country they relate to, you can let me know in the comments section below. Also, have you recently changed energy supplier? Let me know below.
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My aim with each blog post is to help you move to a better financial future. I believe that there is not enough financial education in the national curriculum and I intend to share anything helpful that I have learned along the way. I am by no means a financial expert. None of the information on this website constitutes financial advice and is provided as general information only. This is my personal finance blog; my marketing blog is over here and I have been blogging there since 2010. I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.
Best regards,
Mike
