This month I've mostly been getting excited about switching electricity provider.
Since moving into our house just over four years ago I've had, some may say, an unhealthy addiction to monitoring our energy usage. As we're an electricity-only property, that's pretty easy to do through taking meter readings and keeping a log in a spreadsheet. Yep, you heard me. I have a spreadsheet for monitoring electricity consumption.
The good thing about doing this, though, is it gives me the ability to spot patterns and trends, as well as providing a better idea on our average usage.
When we first moved in our monthly direct debit to Swalec was £97 a month, which increased to £100. The direct debits pretty much covered us at the end of the year, putting our account in to significant credit during the summer to see it covering our heavy heating usage in the winter.
We did everything we could to manage our daily consumption from using the washer-dryer overnight on our cheaper economy 7 tariff, to shutting down power at the wall for our TV equipment when not in use and got our average usage to around 9630kWh or £1037 a year.
Whilst I had a little time off from work I took a look around an energy comparison site and discovered First Utility, a smaller energy provider that was able to save me around £275 a year on our current tariff. Sounded great so made the switch. The deal was sweetened even more by a Quidco cashback of £30. A nice little boost to our holiday fund!
I did a little bit of research before going through with the switch and could see they have had issues with customer complaints in the past which they have recognised and put investment in customer services in place to reduce them. Whilst their own performance statistics show the number of complaints is rising, the actual ratio of complaints to number of customers is falling, from 1403:100,000 in Q2 2013 to 978:100,000 in Q4 2014. The biggest areas of complaint were billing and getting through to customer services.
Bearing in mind that I had never had to actually contact Swalec for support and it was unlikely I'd have to do so anyway, I carried on with the switch.
It all went through quickly and pain free (to me at least, maybe not for Swalec) with good progress e-mails from First Utility, a goodbye letter from Swalec and no hassles.
The only thing I would like to see, though, is the ability to easily waive your right to the 14-day cooling off period. If you're absolutely, positively sure you want to make the switch or buy the service then I think you should be able to go ahead and do it without having to wait.
Here's to being ~£275 a year better off!
