Changing Utility Providers

I thought I would just post this information from a recent experience as it may assist others who are contemplating the same. I think this is the best place for it rather than the saving money section as it has nothing to do with savings for our hobby, a Mod may disagree and move it of course.

We all know that OFGEM have been leaning on the suppliers on our behalf and prior to mid-January this year if you switched it could take 5 weeks or more. Now there is a new industry standard of changing within 3 weeks, although many of the web sites still provide the old timescale which confused me when I recently tried to change online.

My current supplier contract has early exit penalties so I cannot leave before 28^th February. Thinking it was going to take 5 weeks I signed up online for a new contract with a an alternative supplier thinking I would be able to select a date to switch at the earliest so I did not incur these charges. Their web site said 5 weeks and I knew there was in any case a 14 day cooling off period so on 1^st February I did it and on completion of the whole process the auto generated new contract start date was given as 18^th February, obviously not what I wanted.

I assumed this could be rectified and contacted the new supplier by telephone to learn about the new industry standard time scale to change and an apology for incorrect information on their web site. I also learned that you cannot fix a change date! Seems to me like OFGEM have made a mistake in that aspect given that most are chasing the cheaper 1 year fixed deals these days.  Any how they readily cancelled my application and I intended to apply again allowing the 17 days they said it now took.

I confirmed with my existing provider that I would be charged the exit fees even if I swapped supplier with only 1 day to go despite their policy of not increasing my tariff after the contract term if a new supplier tells them I am changing before my contract ends. Work that one out from a customer focused stance?

Unfortunately for me it meant that their current tariff offer had expired by 2 days and their replacement was a staggering £180 more for the same energy consumption for gas and electric.

I went to a second supplier today (12^th) whose prices were just a couple of pounds different in my original quote and whose tariff was still available to find they could not fix a change date and they could not guarantee that even allowing the 17 days to change period so they advised me to change on Monday 16^th February so that I could guarantee I had the statutory 14 days cooling off period should their auto generated change date for some strange reason be earlier than 1^st March. They did also say the cooling off period only starts from when I receive the documents through the post in a couple of days, hence their advice to leave it until Monday.

Fingers crossed that their excellent tariff, which will still be saving me around £200 a year, is available on Monday . I hope this may help you. Regards, Roy