In message , Roland Perry
writes
In message , at 12:42:56 on Sun, 8
Mar 2015, alan_m remarked:

Are you on a monthly-DD-estimate tariff because you've been told it's
cheaper?

It was no more expensive when I signed up and no more expensive than
the best BG tariff a year later. The difference was that I never
built up more than a few quid credit with them because the bills were
accurate +/- a few days consumption.

One of the very first energy supplies I had, back in the 80's, was a
monthly instalments one, and resulted in me lending them every
increasing sums of money in the summer, which got paid off in the
winter. I've had a dislike of that sort of scheme ever since.


I prefer the monthly DD arrangement - , winter gas consumption pretty
high due to biggish old victorian house, summer consumption low. So
whilst we do built up credit in the summer, for some of the winter we
can be running significant debits as well.

It is also the best rates as well and every little helps, and is one
less household budget aspect to worry about.

Now that my contract has finished all of the BG offerings,
irrespective of payment method, are around £200/240 more expensive
than the deals from more than a dozen other suppliers. It looks if BG
is attempting to entice existing customers into signing up to very
expensive fixed price deals with £30 quid switch penalties per fuel
for the next year.

BG tried to switch me to a fixed price scheme, but they seemed far too
keen for me to do it, which rang alarm bells.

We've been on fixed deals for a few years now I think, as they have been
the cheapest.

The only downside really is that some deals have exit penalties - in the
£15-30 range it seems - which isn't that much on an annual energy bill
for most people. But not all fixed deals have it - eg our Scottish Power
electricity doesn't, and they can't apply it within 49 days of the end
of the tariff.

Best rates at the moment (and for a few years now) seem to be on fixed
rates - in fact since there were forced to simplify their tariff ranges
often there seems to only be a choice between the standard tariff and
fixed deals
--
Chris French