Why You Shouldn't Swap Energy Suppliers in a Supermarket

With only Eon left still selling door to door, energy companies have been changing the way they sell. Some are even selling in supermarkets. But are their offers as good as they sound?

A 'Which' magazine investigation into selling in shopping centres and supermarkets found that the deals were often dressed up to look attractive, but didn’t offer the best value.

‘£125 discount’, ‘Triple Nectar points’ or ‘up to £70 of M&S vouchers’. These were the types of incentives offered by energy salespeople in stores. But whilst these offers sound attractive, we calculated that the energy deals offered were still more expensive than the cheapest tariff on the market at the time from independent price comparison sites.

Some energy companies send salespeople in shopping centres to sell face-to-face, either as themselves (e.g. EDF Energy and Eon) or through a partnership. Sainsbury’s Energy is a partnership between British Gas and Sainsbury’s, and M&S Energy between SSE and M&S. It means salespeople have access to these stores and are selling under a more trusted brand; that of the supermarket.

One of the problems we found is linked to the fact that when you’re out shopping you’re very unlikely to have your energy details or bills with you. However to produce an accurate comparison, the energy company should at least have your current supplier’s name, the name of the tariff(s) you’re on, the mode of payment you use and your annual energy consumption figures.

But unless you know all of that by heart, the salespeople would use a rough estimate. And the biggest problem was that all salespeople produced quotes on the basis that the customer was on their supplier’s standard tariff. Only a small minority of salespeople now what tariff they are on. The salesperson would likely infate the figures the figures as this would also inflate the potential saving!

Using standard tariffs as a default inevitably shows a saving as they are usually expensive. But if the customer was on a cheaper deal (say a cheaper online tariff), it would result in the quoted deal being more expensive than their existing contract.

'Which' found that customers were quoted between £20 and £142 of annual savings when in fact the customers in the scenario would have been between £39 and £311 worse off.
And what’s more, they had to sign right there. Salespeople say that this is not a problem since there would be a cooling-off period during which you could cancel. But we think you should take your time to compare deals when switching energy supplier.

Another problem is that the salespeople only offer the products of one supplier - they have no access to the products of other suppliers, who may in fact be cheaper.

When switching suppliers and shopping around for better deals I would recommend an idependent comparison site such as http://www.getmecheapbills.com

This lists ALL SUPPLIERS and ALL DEALS available and give a list of the cheapest suppliers in price order. As many as 80 different deals may be listed so the customer can check exactly how there present deal compares and where it fits in the league table. i would recommend that ebeveryone checks this site regularly in order to see that they are still getting a good deal on their energy bills and to get a better deal if necessary.