theFIREstarter

Storm… I mean Energy Price Hikes alert!

As St Jude’s Storm is about to batter the South coast of England (and it sounds pretty horrendous out there already!) I thought I would talk about another mini storm that is about to hit in a different area, that is the lastest Energy Price Hikes. You’ve likely read about this all over the news, but this is me putting in my bit for a call to action if you haven’t looked into switching yet: do it!.

Again, it should be pretty common knowledge on how you can compare energy suppliers with adverts flying around for gocompare and the likes (Doesn’t everyone just hate the fat moustachioed man? What a annoyingly brilliant advertising campaign that was!) but the best way if you are going to switch energy providers is to do it through the TopCashback website, who will pay you a commision whoever you end up going through. Just click on this link, sign up an account if you don’t have one, then search for “Gas”, “Electricity” or “Utilities and compare the cashback offers available. If you go through confused.com via TopCashback you can get up to £25 cashback at the time of writing, for example!

British Gas, NPower and SSE (which incorporates the companies SWALEC, Southern Electric, Scottish Hydro Electric and Atlantic Electric and Gas) have all announced price hikes coming up very soon, and the rest are likely to follow suit, so getting a fix in place, even if it is a 1 year one, would be a very good idea.

The benefits of a long term fix are obvious (4 year fixes are available with NPower and EDF), but prices would have to rise at least 10% per year to make this worth it, and you will generally be overpaying in the first two years, then recouping it back in the final two years. Obviously if prices go sky high, you could be cashing in big time, although I think my strategy will be to refix yearly and try to reduce the bills at source, i.e. be more efficient and energy use conscious.

I’ve been through everything with a fine tooth comb and have found that if you want a “Green energy” supplier with a decent deal and what looks to be good customer services then “Woodland trust energy” are looking pretty good for me (but your area could well be totally different of course). I could save about £100 or so per year by going with one of the dirt cheap suppliers but they have got lots of bad reviews. You pays your moneys you makes your choice, as they say.

Finally, I apologize for the dry nature of this post but as I think it’s probably wet enough outside already for most of us. 🙂