Price cap increases- To fix or not to fix?

Me too. I went ahead and did it, but found to my alarm that I had apparently arranged to move out of my house and back in again the same day. OK, if that’s how it works - but then I found that this involved closing my existing account and opening a new one with no history and (presumably) none of the benefits I’d accrued. This isn’t what I signed up for, so I tried to get the change reversed. Not possible online, telephone only, they said. Two anxious days of waiting for phone lines to open again ensued, but I think we managed it today.

I explained that the tariff I wanted to change to wasn’t available on my renewal page. One of the agents I chatted with told me to look at the Home page, which I eventually managed to find at www.ovoenergy.com and not behind the big Home button. There it was, but that’s where the move out/move in/close account/open account circus started. So, advice to those about to fix: avoid the Home page and work only from the Renewals page.

@Firedog @Nukecad did you consider the 2 year fix?

Yes, but I chickened out. Anything can happen over the next year, and probably will, so the £95 exit fee looks fairly ominous should prices in general fall. I also expect some sort of easing of the standing charge burden for light users like me to be at least in the offing a year hence.

@Jeffus I had looked at it but the rates were higher than the Fixed Loyalty plan rates that I had beeen offered.

However just looking again online the Fixed Loyalty rates have changed/increased from what I was originally offered.

I wasn’t aware that an offered ‘fixed’ plan could change rates like that, but thinking about it I suppose it does make sense and that it’s only fixed once you actually sign up.
Time to recalculate.

Even so I think that in the current climate with tarifs 2 years is a bit too long to fix.

Gas wholesale prices continue to fall so if this is sustained the Cornwall Insight figures for gas and electric will drop at their next press release. 

These prices feed into the ofgem price cap which looks at historic prices.

Wow, this is even more of a flexible situation than I thought.

I just checked the newly offered ‘fixed loyalty’ tariff and entered the new figures into my spreadsheet calculation, then went back to check something and the figures being offered had already changed in that 5 minutes.

I still can’t work out just why OVO estimate my new DDs on Fixed Loyalty would be around £193 a month though when I calculate them at around £134?
That’s a £700+ a year difference.

The only explantion for that could be the anual usage figures, and I am using the usage they have on the website - so they must be using something else. (Something that is much higher than my actual usage).

Edit- I believe that I have found it.
In a recent email about the Jan price increases they have my anual gas usage as 31485 Kwh, on the website gas usage for 2023 is currently 8444 kWh, almost a 4x difference.

TBH though it’s still not the full story as if I put 31485 kWh for gas into my calcs then the DD would be around £274 a month.
Just divide the £2441.95 estimated for gas shown here by 12 to see what I mean.

Where that 31485 kWh is coming from I have no idea, but it could explain why they have constantly been trying to set my DDs too high.

email:

Account on website:

Oh dear, another fictional FAC figure. 

If you visit ovoenergy.com and click the Fix now button, you should be able to enter your actual usage figures along with the other details, leading to a more meaningful quote. Do you see the same (or similar) Loyalty tariffs as you got in the email? 

As I wrote earlier, I wouldn’t recommend this route to change your plan, but at least you should get a better idea of what the change might involve.

Hi, 

can I get your opinions please. What is the best rate to be on now the rates have gone down.  I don’t really understand it all. I’m o variable at the minute. Thank you 

You will get a variety of opinions on the forum

For piece of mind fixing now will lock you into lower rates than your current variable rate. That is because wholesale prices have fallen so energy suppliers can buy energy in advance cheaply at the moment.

Your variable rate is forecast to be lower than it is now if you decide not to switch

https://www.cornwall-insight.com/press/wholesale-price-hikes-and-ofgem-updates-raise-price-cap-forecast/

But nothing is guaranteed obviously.

It is worth shopping around if you decide to fix as you may find better offers elsewhere than OVO.

If you want to stay on a variable tariff then there is an Eon tariff that guarantees to track lower than the price cap for 12 month with no exit fees.

Overall I would say now isn't a bad time to think about fixing. There is nothing to suggest another big fall in wholesale prices.

Just fixed for one year. I compared my original variable tariff with the one year fixed loyalty , the fixed loyalty actually came out £6 cheaper over the year (£1322 to £1316), This is mainly because the standing charge is slightly less, but the unit rates slightly more. Given that a10% increase is occurring in October a sensible choice.

I was however amused by some of the wording which suggested that the figures appearing in my sign-up e-mail may not be the same as the figures quoted when signing up! They do match.