Will npower come back with a vengence?

After a few very turbulent weeks, it seems the dust may be starting to settle around the energy market battlefield. Gordon Brown has promised an energy efficiency plan to help combat fuel poverty, supermarkets are lowering the price of unleaded at their petrol pumps, and children are being encouraged to ‘Green Up’.

Battle is still raging in my household though. And I’m not talking about the battle for the bathroom in the morning…

Oh no, this is much bigger. It’s a battle of the “giants” no less, with reigning champion British Gas clinging on for dear life, while npower, the competitive newcomer, claws its way in to our home, with promises of cheaper gas and electricity, and paperless billing.

It all started a few weeks ago. The news of price increases and bigger bills was a much talked about topic, in the press and in our household.

Naturally we were keen to see how much we could save by switching.

Using EnergyChoices comparison service, we decided that our best bet would be to switch to npower, who promised to save us up to £400 on our annual bill. Hurray!

Switching was really easy; we did it there and then online, and it only took a few minutes.

A welcome pack from npower a week later told us everything we needed to know about the switch. Our household was one of happiness and relief – we had managed to avoid the price hikes! Double hurray!

But our happiness did not last long… A week later I received an email from my housemate:

Yo Becca,
I had phone call from British Gas today and they asked me why we left.
They want to give us a better deal - 15% off!
They also said that npower had a price increase a few weeks ago, and now British Gas is only 3% more expensive than npower. Please can you check this?
If this is true… what do you think we should do?
Should we go back to British Gas?

Evidently battling it out for our custom, British Gas is trying to win us back with its own promises of cheaper gas and electricity. It’s no surprise really – until the npower switch day, we had been a long-standing loyal customer, always paying our bills on time and in full. And like many households, we hadn’t even considered switching, or thought about how much we could save by changing suppliers.

So, what to do? Well, after much deliberation, we decided to email npower with British Gas’ proposition, asking whether they could match it, or offer us a better deal. If they can’t then we may well switch back to British Gas, and opt for their Click Energy 5 tariff, an online tariff which allows you to input your own meter readings.

In the words of the ever authoritative John Anderson: “Contender ready! Gladiator ready!”

Let the battle begin…

 We’re pulling rabbits out of hats…

In response to the deluge of mail we received regarding the complexity of submitting meter readings to British Gas, here at Consumer Choices we are pleased to announce we’ve cracked the code.

For the inside track on how to successfully submit a meter reading at britishgas.co.uk/meter, take a look at the latest instalment from our very own Consumer Spy, Becca Talbot.

Having liaised with British Gas itself, Becca has constructed a step by step guide to help you through the process, designed with newcomers to the world of online energy tariffs in mind.

So stop tearing your hair out, hitting your head against the wall or, worse still, thinking about reverting back to paper bills, and use Becca’s guide to take the sting out of online account handling.

The Consumer Spy - Meter Reading Made Easy

 This is the easy bit….

*UPDATE* Find out how to input your Click Energy 5 meter reading by following our guide.

It’s been drawn to my attention by many Consumer Choices subscribers that manually inputting meter readings on the British Gas site is at best confusing, and at worst virtually impossible.

Here’s a selection of the comments I’ve received:

• “I have gone to britishgas.co.uk/meter and can not find where you add the reading”

• “Need to give British Gas a meter reading, can’t find where to put it. beginning to wish I hadn’t bothered”

• “I have tried to give you my first meter reading but it seems that whoever is responsible for this website has omitted to make provision for clients to use”

• “I am trying to submit my first meter reading but cannot find a way through the minefield”

• “Come on British Gas sort out your system, I see I am not the only one having this problem”

Damning indeed, and sent in the kind of volume that suggests there is a genuine problem here.

As an E.ON customer myself, I’ve not had any first hand experience with the British Gas Click Energy 5 online account management system. If anyone does know of a direct solution to this problem, please leave a comment below.

Having had a look at the ‘your account’ area, I would strongly suggest that you log in before attempting to submit a meter reading. It should make the process a whole lot easier.

One final note, and I really hope I’m putting two and two together here and making five, but I noticed the following in the Click Energy 5 terms and conditions:

“Click Energy 5 is for customers who agree to manage their bills online and take paperless billing. We reserve the right to transfer you onto our current standard variable rates if you fail to sign up to online account management and paperless billing within the first 6 weeks of coming onto supply with us and/or signing up to the Click Energy 5 product from us.”

British Gas wouldn’t be making it deliberately hard for you to input your meter readings would they?