Energy bills: auto switching sites have left me trapped on pricey deal
Auto switching sites were supposed to take the stress out of shopping for energy deals, but I’m now stuck on a deal I can’t leave.
I’ve been an advocate of auto-switching sites in the past. Personally, I find shopping around for energy tariffs one of the most mind-numbing experiences around, so a service that handles the switch for me sounded perfect.
It meant that I wouldn’t end up on a provider’s standard tariff, the costly ones that have been such a rip-off in the past that the authorities had to introduce the energy price cap.
Unfortunately, it’s because of my apathy towards handling switching myself that I’m now stuck on a rubbish deal that I can’t get out of, meaning higher energy bills just when my energy use is about to rocket.
Flipping with weflip
My first experience with an auto-switching website was with weflip, which was owned by Gocompare.com. And it all went OK (and I have written about auto-switching sites in a positive light before).
The site compared my existing deal with First Utility with those on the market, and pinpointed a tariff from an energy firm I’d never heard of before, called Zebra Energy.
The process itself was great ‒ everything was taken care of for me, and I saved the best part of £90 on the cheaper tariff. Result!
12 months on, weflip contacted me again to recommend a new, cheaper tariff, this time with another provider I was unaware of called Tonik Energy.
Buoyed by my positive experience, I went ahead with the switch, which the firm reckoned would save me a massive £127 compared to what I’d pay staying with Zebra.
It was a no-brainer, so once again I moved suppliers.
Hitting the wall
Things didn’t go so well with Tonik sadly.
Within just a few months the supplier had gone bust, its customers picked up by Scottish Power. I detailed my experiences with this particular move for loveMONEY at the time, but suffice to say it was all pretty straightforward.
A couple of months later weflip was bought by rival Look After My Bills, and to be honest I wasn’t a fan of my dealings with the Look After My Bills team.
Rather than take a proactive role in choosing my energy supplier, I opted to continue with an auto-switching service, albeit a different one.
So I signed up for MoneySavingExpert’s Cheap Energy Club, which picked out Green Supplier Limited as the best deal for me, cutting my bills by £67 a year.
The switch itself went through smoothly, and I hoped that was the end of worrying about energy suppliers for a year.
Spoiler alert ‒ that didn’t happen. A couple of weeks ago ‒ and about five months after the switch took place ‒ Green became the latest victim of the ongoing energy crisis which has seen a succession of small suppliers unable to remain in business.
I’m trapped
I have now been moved over to Shell Energy, and again the process has been smooth.
The trouble is that I’m trapped. My auto-switching service has pointed out that the energy crisis is so acute that no rival supplier is taking on new customers on terms much cheaper than the existing energy price cap.
In other words, there’s not much value to switching at all ‒ I just have to sit on the fairly naff deal I now have and lump it, until (or perhaps if) things settle down.
And the annoying thing is, this is ultimately my fault.
Obviously, I’m not to blame for two successive suppliers hitting the skids, but if I’m honest if it wasn’t for an auto-switching service suggesting them, I wouldn’t have taken out their tariffs.
That’s because when it comes to supporting the little guy, I’m a bit of a fairweather fan.
I’ll move to a challenger supplier, so long as I’ve actually heard of them ‒ First Utility, OVO, and the like would all have been perfectly acceptable when I was the one actively choosing a new supplier.
But I know for a fact that I would have shied away from names like Tonik or Green if they had come up through a price comparison site, precisely because I didn’t know anything about them.
For some reason that didn’t feel like such an issue when the move was suggested through an auto-switching site.
It’s difficult not to be cross at myself.
If I hadn’t taken the lazy ‒ or to be more charitable, timesaving ‒ option of an auto-switching site, I have no doubt that right now I’d be on a relatively cheap tariff from a supplier that isn’t counting down the days until it goes out of business.
That isn’t the fault of an auto-switching site either.
They have worked in exactly the way they are supposed to, highlighting rival tariffs that will save me money. It was my decision to let those switches go through to small suppliers I’d never heard of.
It’s been a chastening experience and means I’m more likely to go back to sorting out my energy tariffs myself in future, or at least being a bit more choosy when an auto-switching site suggests a new tariff from a less renowned name.
Has your energy firm gone bust? Did you find that supplier through a comparison site or an auto-switching site? Let us know your experiences in the comments section below.
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Getting stuck on a pricy deal isn't John's fault. ITs down to the totally ineffective regulation of these energy companies that have to get a licence from OFGEM before they can operate. Surely part of the licensing approval should be that the company has enough capital to weather market disruption, and has forward contract in place roughly equivalent to it contract liabilities with its customers. Its intolerable that these firms go bust a soon as something happens that they didn't plan for, and then they protest that "we didn't do anything wrong". What nonsense, their business has failed because they didn't have in place measures to protect themselves against market upheaval. I was with Symbio, an electricity only supplier. Nevertheless the spike in gas prices has done for them - pure stupidity. My Gas is with Zog, a gas only supplier who are still trading. Clearly they are exposed more than Symbio and indeed more than dual fuel suppliers to the market price of gas, yet they survive. I have 18 months left on my Zog contract at very keen prices so i hope the do well in the future and see my contract out. Their fixed tariffs now appear uncompetitive against the price cap but their variable price tariff with no exit fee still looks attractive.
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BoilingFrog, any industry can be efficient or inefficient. The energy supply sector is no different. Most suppliers are not generators/extractors. They are simply billing outfits. They buy the energy from the wider market and sell it to us at a slightly higher cost. If such a supplier has slick systems, an effective yet low-cost marketing strategy and an excellent customer service record it will require less spending in unproductive parts of the business. Hence, it can sell to us at a lower rate than the inefficient behemoth that has massive costs resulting from poor management, lax service levels and expensive marketing schemes. Competition makes companies compete and become more efficient/lower-cost. Look at the NHS - an effective monopoly - and really question if it is efficient and provides value for money.
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I believe there are many reasons for the situation we now find ourselves experiencing. . Lack of gas storage . Failure to frack the massive shale stocks we sit upon . Race to use wind and solar far too quickly . Reliance upon limited supply routes for liquid gas . Tax burden Italy has over 100 days (usage) of gas storage whilst we have about eight. The fracking moratorium should be reviewed. USA is pretty much self-sufficient in gas usage with their fracking activities. Not heard of any earthquakes as of yet in Texas, North Dakota, Wyoming and Colorado where most fracking occurs. The last month has been less windy than normal and I know from my own solar panels that this year has been less sunny (in Greater Manchester at least) than the previous year. Most of our gas comes from Norway and Russia via pipeline with Qatar supplying by ship. Tax on energy includes a massive contribution towards 'green' energy. Everyone without solar panels is paying ME for the generation I derive from my panels. Whilst I've little sympathy with the author his lack of attention to switching himself would not have helped him much. This year I've geen with EDF, then Igloo, then moved to Green and now I've moved to Octopus. Igloo notified me of an increase and I elected to move myself to Green. I delayed the move as long as possible because the current supplier cannot apply the price increase to you whilst you are moving. Then Green warned me of a price increase - so I started the move to Octopus - again with a delay. Green or course went into administration but my move was in progress so I landed at Octopus. They have also announced an increase - mid October start - but I'll stay as nothing lower currently exists. If you'd moved to a fixed tarif shortly before this debacle the supplying company would always have the option to close down and that's the end of your fixed tarif. It would be mightily upsetting if you'd paid a premium rate for, say, 18 months of a two year fixed tarif only to find the company folds. So, a fixed tarif is NO guarantee at the moment. The Channel Islands may soon be left in the dark if France pulls the plug on them because of the fishing dispute. One solution would be to sail one of our 12 nuclear submarines into Port Elizabeth and moor it. Plug a cable into the nuclear power plant and the other end in the main sub-station and keep the deck guns loaded for any troublesome fishing boats with a tricolour.
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08 October 2021