Energy Tariffs

[Oldgreybeard]

I looked on Octopus and it just said - 'you're probably better off staying where you are for now'

That seems to have been the holding position from many suppliers for the past year, pretty sure that same info has been up from Octopus for a long time now.

The annoying thing is that there have been several hints of much lower overnight prices, as a consequence of the price cap and, it seems, some re-vamping of the balance between peak and off-peak by one or two suppliers.

All I want to see is the off peak tariff that applies from tomorrow, from each supplier (including the one I'm with - they are keeping schtum about the changes).

[Stinsy]

Pity the other energy suppliers are really taking this to the wire, by not revealing their tariffs until the very last minute.

I think they are waiting for the weekend, when they will announce their tariff then make sure there is no one manning their phones for the next 48 hours . . .

(Does than make me sound cynical?)

I'm still trying without success to get quotes from Octopus and Ovo as a new customer. I hope things change after Sat.

I looked on Octopus and it just said - 'you're probably better off staying where you are for now'

That is online. You have to ring them.

[Thebeeman]

I emailed Octopus and got a response asking for details but have heard nothing since, I await tomorrow. Ovo didn't bother to respond. I tried the phone and could not get past the recorded message saying don't bother us.

[AE-NMidlands]

Isn't it just that, while the suppliers might have hedged their expected gas needs, they don't want any new csutomers who will put the amount they have to supply over what they have contracts for?
Ofgem have criticised suppliers for refusing to take customers in new houses (which they are not allowed to do) but I guess that if people have a supplier they aren't going to get too concerned, especially if the cap means there won't be many savings to be made.
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[Oldgreybeard]

The problem is that suppliers can legitimately increase some tariffs by way more than the cap, as long as they can show, via some far from transparent mechanism, that the average tariff remains under the cap, when averaged over all of their customers.

I've already seen this first hand in April, when UW raised our (standard variable, so capped) night tariff from 7.56p/kWh to 17.831p/kWh, a rise that was massively higher than the supposed 54% OFGEM cap.

There is a great deal in the energy supply market that is kept deliberately obscure, including the price of new tariffs as from midnight tonight.

[nowty]

All the suppliers phone lines will be melting down over the next few days so I would wait at least a week before trying to change anything. Same thing happened back in April, but this time it will be worse.

The BBC and Martin Lewis have put out the usual recommendations to send manual meter readings to your supplier for end of today. Me thinks there may be some exaggeration's of usage.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63074521

https://www.facebook.com/540806539/vide ... 961142108/

[nowty]

Someone posted some info about how Octopus Agile will work from 1st Ost which I had not seen anywhere before. I suspect the gas tracker tariff might work in a similar way.

"From October 1, your dynamic unit rates will be discounted whenever they are above the Energy Price Guarantee rates. You don’t need to do anything — this will be handled automatically.

Now, this is going to get complicated, so you might like to grab a cuppa before reading on…

On fixed term tariffs, the Energy Price Guarantee discounts unit rates above an average of 34p / kWh — the actual number varies in different areas — to bring them down to that price, but with a maximum discount of 17p / kWh (although that’s another average that varies by region).

Essentially, this means:
If your dynamic unit rate is less than 34p / kWh — congrats, you’re getting a better price than most
If your dynamic unit rate is 34-52p / kWh, it will be discounted to 34p / kWh automatically
If your dynamic unit rate is above 52p / kWh, it will be discounted by 17p automatically — so 78p / kWh will be reduced to 61p / kWh
These discounts will apply from October 1, but you won’t see them just yet in the rates in your online account — we should have online prices showing the discount in the next week or so"

[Oldgreybeard]

Complicated is an understatement!

I may be rather cynical, but I've been coming around to the view that complication of prices is very deliberate. The more complex and convoluted a set of tariff prices are, the less easy they are to compare with prices from others.

I've already spotted this a few times with price comparison websites (when they were still working). They almost always gave the supposed "cheapest" supplier as one that was considerably more expensive than the true cheapest supplier. I thought at first this was just down to the peak to off-peak ratio being wrong, but those sites often now allow the actual usage to be entered, and they still recommend suppliers that are not best value.

For those that don't have the patience and understanding to try and dig out tariffs from suppliers (and very many suppliers hide their true tariffs!) and then have the means to compare actual usage from one supplier's tariffs to another's, then it seems inevitable that many are not going to get best value for their needs.

I dearly wish that OFGEM would force all suppliers to publish their tariffs in an easy to find location. The way some suppliers hide tariffs reminds me of the commander of the Vogon Constructor Fleet, telling the inhabitants of Earth that they had no cause to complain about the hyperspace bypass: “There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years.”

The tariffs for many suppliers may as well be lodged somewhere in Alpha Centauri as far as finding them goes.

[Oldgreybeard]

Had another look around most of the suppliers, seems only Octopus have made any sort of announcement as to what prices were from midnight last night. The rest of us on variable tariffs mostly don't have a clue as to what those tariffs actually are.

[AE-NMidlands]

Had another look around most of the suppliers, seems only Octopus have made any sort of announcement as to what prices were from midnight last night. The rest of us on variable tariffs mostly don't have a clue as to what those tariffs actually are.

Unfortunately that doesn't seem to extend to the Coop fuels which they administer. I guess I'll find out later this month when I default onto the variable (capped) tarrif.
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