Utility Warehouse: broadband, energy and mobile deals reviewed

We take a look at one of the UK's biggest savings clubs, the utility provider Utility Warehouse.

Utility Warehouse offers gas, electricity, broadband, home phone and mobile phone services.

It operates as a discount club so you get better deals the more services you buy and bundle together.

Utility Warehouse has an army of customers and distributors who recommend or even sell Utility Warehouse's services to friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances and even strangers, in return for benefits.

We last looked at Utility Warehouse back in 2011, and received lots of comments from its customers and former customers. Things have changed a bit since then, so we wanted to see how the services and prices compare now.

A word of warning

Before we dive into reviewing the services again, you should know that Utility Warehouse customers and distributors have a bad reputation due to a minority who write aggressive comments under any articles that include a negative word about the business.

The posters often don't admit that they have a financial incentive in defending the company.

Other people write unbelievably glowing reviews of the company, which many loveMONEY readers consider to be dubious. Can anyone really get that excited and emotional about an energy company?

So bear that in mind when reading any comments later.

Gas and electricity

Starting with energy, Utility Warehouse has three tariffs to pick from and a Feed in Tariff.

Its value tariff promises to be at least 0.5% cheaper, Gold Energy should be at least 2.5% cheaper and Double Gold is meant to be at least 5% cheaper compared to the ‘Big Six’. The Double Gold option is fixed until August 2018.

Below are the prices we were quoted for a dual fuel tariff based on a London postcode with average usage.

The Utility Warehouse website states: “we guarantee to beat the average of the cheapest variable tariffs from the 'big 6' energy suppliers. So, once you switch to us, you will never have to switch again. Guaranteed savings, forever.”

Which from what we can see is true. The average ‘Big Six’ standard tariff is about £1,070 right now, which is £9 more than the Utility Warehouse Value tariff.

If you bundle the energy deal with home phone, broadband and mobile, you get discounts, which means you will be £121 better off compared to taking out a standard tariff with one of the major energy companies.

However, while the Utility Warehouse deal is competitive there are a range of cheaper energy deals under £800 around right now that offer an even bigger saving. See the cheapest gas and electricity tariffs.

Compare gas and electricity tariffs in your area with loveMONEY

Home phone and broadband

Utility Warehouse offers a home phone deal and the choice of three home phone and broadband deals.

Home phone costs £16.20 a month and gets you free evening and weekend calls and free anytime calls to other Utility Warehouse landlines or mobiles.

It can be combined with any of the three broadband deals, which include:

When shopping around the Utility Warehouse deals are slightly more expensive than several other providers offering products with similar core features.

The Post Office for example offers a phone and broadband deal, with truly unlimited usage and speeds of up to 17mbs for £16 a month for 12 months which reverts to £24 a month for the rest of the 18-month deal.

Again if you take out other Utility Warehouse products, the firm claims you can get a better deal.

Combining phone and broadband with a mobile deal for example can get you the choice of 25% off broadband for life, Avios points, free international calls or Gourmet Society membership.

So you will have to weigh up whether these benefits are worthwhile to you.

Compare broadband deals with broadbandchoices.co.uk

Mobile phone

Utility Warehouse provides six mobile deals ranging from 250 minutes, unlimited texts and 100MB of data per month at the lower end and unlimited minutes, unlimited texts and 4GB of data at the higher.

The six deals are each available either pay monthly with handsets that start from £26 on a 24-month contract or are available as SIM only.

*You get an extra 2GB of data when you take out a home phone and broadband deal

These SIM only deals are very competitive compared to what you can get elsewhere.

The Value 250 deal looks like the cheapest SIM-only deal on the market for 4G users on a 30-day contract, unless you are a BT broadband customer that can take advantage of the BT Mobile deal which costs £5 a month and gets you 200 minutes, unlimited texts and 500MB of data.  Take a look at The cheapest 4G SIM-only mobile deals to compare.

Utility Warehouse also promises no price rises during your contract, to lower your bill automatically once the price of your handset is paid off, and cheaper out of bundle charges compared to other companies.

Compare mobile phone tariffs with Recombu

Verdict

Utility Warehouse claims that you can save £328 a year with its Gold Energy bundle which combines phone, broadband and energy, £392 a year on its Gold Talk bundle which combines phone, broadband and mobile or £611 a year on its Double Gold bundle which combines phone, broadband, mobile and energy.

However, it's best to shop around to find the best deals on all your utilities individually and then compare to what you could get with Utility Warehouse.

From our research we found better deals on energy and broadband . However, many of the mobile deals from Utility Warehouse were very competitive.

The company has been accused of not being open with fees in the past, but it now has a guide here. You should look take a look at this carefully in comparison to other providers when shopping around to see if signing up is the best option for you.

This article has been updated since it was originally published

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