In message , Roland Perry
writes
In message , at 18:56:06 on Sun, 8
Mar 2015, Chris French remarked:

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.

After having been jerked around right royally by nPower's "sculpting"
scheme (where they overcharged by manipulating the way tariff changes
interacted between periods of high and low consumption) I never again
want to be in the situation of having to check I've been billed the
correct amount when estimated consumptions and my billing periods don't
co-incide with the timing of price increase/decreases.

I'll pay for what I use, when I use it; thanks.

Fair enough, it suits some people. I prefer to save a few quid

I always take a reading at tariff change times anyway (in fact I
normally send in readings every couple of weeks or so nowadays - easy
with a smartphone to just stand in front of the meter and send it off)

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 fixed price they offered me was higher than I was already paying,
expecting me to bet that ad-hoc energy prices were going to increase
more. As it happens, they've gone down, as has BG's ad-hoc rate.

A while back, fixed price tariffs tended to be more than variable
tariffs and I stayed on a variable tariff. but that seems to have
changed lately - I think maybe because prices stopped rising so much
(and then ahve fallen) and also they have less tariffs now.

All the cheapest deals when I recently checked (and switched gas
supplier) were fixed priced deals. Though I think they have bottomed out
Npowers current fixed tariff is a little higher than the one I moved to
about a month ago.

If you are on the standard variable tariff (which of course you might
not be - could be a legacy variable tariff), I'd be very surprised if a
fixed deal was not cheaper at the moment

--
Chris French