Switching Energy Providers

Last night, hubby and I did a review on our power bills and searched online to see if we can actually get some savings by switching providers. We've only been with two energy providers, Genesis Energy and Mercury Energy. It turns out that they've got the most expensive rates based on pricing trends gathered by Powerswitch. There are a number of energy (electricity and gas) providers and they are equivalent to the retail side of Meralco. Back home, Meralco covers both distribution as well as retail and they're the only provider in the metro so you can't really do anything with their prices.

We still can't figure out what daily fixed charge and variable rate means. But what I did learn was that we fall under the Low User category. And we also noticed that we've been paying more since we switched to mercury.

Powerswitch gave us a lot of information and upon filling in their form, we decided to give Energy Online a try as they are in the lower level in terms of pricing and overall review seems to be ok, like clarity of bill, service, etc. I've heard about them from a tv commercial which was under the theme "EnergyWise". This series of commercials gives all sorts of tips to save on energy like getting Energy Star rated whiteware, insulation tips for the home, even info about energy-efficient tires.

SwitchMe provides a similar service to Powerswitch. They will present a list of available price packages across various vendors showing you how much you can save by switching over.

And running into this website http://www.canstarblue.co.nz/utilities/electricity-providers/ was just a bonus as they provided consumer ratings across vendors from 2014.

I'm familiar with Consumer.Org as I frequent their site often and even availed of membership previously while I was just starting out. When you're not at all familiar with the brands and vendors, this website provide sufficient information to show test results, findings, etc on consumer products, including energy providers. This is an overview that I found while looking for reviews on Energy Online: https://www.consumer.org.nz/articles/energy-providers

We switched to Mercury late last year because a door salesman told us that we can save more and that he will give us a fixed rate for the next six months. The six months is over and then they offered me a fixed price plan for two years. This is what prompted us to do our research to see if we are really saving. We weren't comfortable with the rates so we've decided to switch.

It can be confusing to compare price packages and the above online services helped simplify things. End of the day it's how much saving you're going to have. So we'll see how things will be like with Energy Online.