Power Companies in New Zealand: Your recommendation please

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#1569161 10-Jun-2016 09:34

DaveB:

But isn't that the way the internet works? 10% Factual and 90% assumption?

My friend who is a lawyer jokes: "You read it on the Internet, it must be true! :-)"

20/80 is a common business term so loved by some "business gurus" suggesting that you may be getting 80% of your revenue from 20% of your clients. I saw it too many times when those 80% of customers are treated poorly or bluntly lied to...

I am in favour of 99.99% accuracy. If you are not trying your best to be 100% accurate - expect your business success to be as good as you are trying to be...

pedrogarcia

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#1569252 10-Jun-2016 11:09

I've been with Powershop for about five years and would not consider changing.

allio

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#1569393 10-Jun-2016 13:14

I've been with Powershop for six years or so and don't really have any complaints. However I've recently got tired of the "prepay" model and have been yearning for a simple post-paid bill every month. I'm aware that Powershop will just auto-buy power at the standard rate if you don't manually buy the specials, but if you do that then you're not getting any of the promised savings that probably led you to switch to them in the first place. I figure the diligent Powershoppers are being subsidised by the lazy ones, and recently I think I've been more in the latter category than the former.

I've just bought a house and have switched to Energy Online, mostly for their very competitive bottled LPG prices when bundled with power. However their standard rate (with prompt payment discount) appears to work out at pretty much the same as Powershop, with no need to constantly log in and buy whatever the special of the week is. I'll try it for a year and see how it goes. I certainly wouldn't have any hesitation moving back to Powershop if there proved to be a significant price difference.

Hammerer

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#1569422 10-Jun-2016 13:58

Powershop has very good communications and we were much more aware of what was happening in the electricity market.

We moved from PowerShop back to a conventional supplier and once again we're quite ignorant of what's happening with electricity prices. On the other hand, it is easy not having to think about electricity almost every day.

We have solar water heating which gets close to boiling our water in high summer. This means that we missed out on much of the benefit of Powershop's cheaper summer prices. But if we were a heavy summer user then PowerShop would be a very good option, e.g. don't go on holiday over Christmas, have lots of relatives come to stay for the summer holidays, use heat pumps heavily for cooling.

frednz

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#1570448 12-Jun-2016 13:39

pedrogarcia:

I've been with Powershop for about five years and would not consider changing.

It looks like Powershop doesn't presently supply gas, is that correct? We would prefer to have a company that supplies both gas and electricity so that you don't have to deal with two different companies.

Regards

Fred

mdf

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#1570469 12-Jun-2016 14:09

We're with Contact and very happy.

Contact does both power and gas. Headline rates are high, but we get a 22% (?) discount for paying "Online" (no statements, must be paid via direct debit) and "Ontime" (no bouncing cheques).

A feature I really like that I haven't seen elsewhere (though it's been a while since I looked) is "Smoothpay". Basically you estimate your power usage for the year, and pay it in even chunks - we pay fortnightly in accordance with the pay cycle. So (say) you pay on average $100 per month in summer and $300 per month in winter, you might pay $200 throughout the year. You don't pay any more or less, but you avoid winter power shocks. About the only downside is if you don't have a good idea on your actual power usage it can take a couple of months to figure out the right regular payment.

And possibly most importantly (why doesn't everyone do this!?), they have a callback feature on their call centre/help line. "We're sorry, your wait is currently 45 minutes. Would you like to wait on hold or schedule a call back?" Well, thanks for asking, but you know, I'm going to have to go with Option B. Not waiting 45 minutes on hold = happy customer.

Flybuys too if that floats your boat.

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littleheaven

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#1570492 12-Jun-2016 15:01

I love Powershop, but it might not be your thing if you want to bundle gas as well. I really like being able to pre-purchase power at cheaper rates. At current usage rates, I'm in credit until the end of July, although that will drop once it gets a bit colder and my consumption goes up. I had to change to Meridian a couple of years back because I went into the Vector SunGenie solar pilot programme, and Meridian had the best solar buy-back rates at the time the panels were installed. Then they reduced them drastically to the point where I calculated I would save more at Powershop (who had no buy-back scheme) than I would make from selling my excess power to the grid. When I contacted Powershop to see if they did solar buy-back yet, they didn't, but they put me into their solar trial (it's not currently offered to everyone) so it was win-win.

Powershop doesn't charge a daily fixed fee - it's all built into their per unit cost, which makes direct comparisons with other providers difficult. To make sure I wasn't worse off with them, I added all the Meridian fixed charges throughout my final year with them to what I'd paid over 12 months on the per-unit fee, then divided the total figure by the number of units I'd used throughout the year. This gave me the true per unit cost, which I could then compare with Powershop. I'd paid just over 32c per unit with Meridian, all up (being on solar they wouldn't offer me a cheap fixed rate). So when I buy from Powershop I know that as long as I stay at or below that figure, I'm no worse off. So far even the "top up today" power has been less than that.

I was really sad when I left Powershop, and I'm so glad to be back again. I think their model suits my a-type personality :)

Geek girl. Freelance copywriter and editor at Unmistakable.co.nz.

michael001

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#1571382 14-Jun-2016 06:49

Fantastic service from Powershop, I thought unbeatable. But I've come to the realisation that it makes sense to change power companies every 12 months. You get sign up bonuses and you can refer friends and everyone benefit from the refer-a-friend deals.

I have a group of family and friends who I recently followed over to Electric Kiwi (about 7 households in total). Electric Kiwi have a free hour of power each and every day. In our house we have our showers just prior to the free hour of power, we turn on the dishwasher and washing machine. More so, we run our heaters in the morning to warm the house up, and its all free. So far we've saved 29% of our power bill for a month.The only issue we had was finding the first person in the chain to start referring people to make sure everyone got $50 credit. Just in case you want to set something up with your friends and family, here is mine, start your chain with $50: Electric Kiwi - Michael's referral link

Anyway, in a few months time we'll all be swapping back to Powershop no doubt to take advantage of of delay in charges and the refer-a-friend bonuses which are much higher. With the savings, the referral bonuses and the delays in being charged during a changeover, I think we might end up with a couple of months free power per year - not too shabby.

Jedsdad

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#1571691 14-Jun-2016 14:31

I use my own Excel Spreadsheet to compare Prices.

It does the calculations for me and gives me a correct answer within 2-3 cents

I prefer to do my own calculations rather than relying on the Powerswitch tool or what a Power Company says I would save

In this example I am comparing Mercury (my power company) and figures from my current bill with 2 others, note the 2 others include GST and the rates include the Lines Company Rates as well as the Electricity Authority Charge.

Mercury shows all the charges separately

Note also Mercury give me 12% discount for prompt payment and Energy Online give 20%

I am a Low User.

I cant change to another company until the end of March next year as it would cost me $150 termination fee but will definitely shop around then

Jedsdad

littleheaven

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#1571698 14-Jun-2016 14:38

Jedsdad:

I cant change to another company until the end of March next year as it would cost me $150 termination fee but will definitely shop around then

Some companies will pay your contract exit fee if you're desperate to move before then :)

Geek girl. Freelance copywriter and editor at Unmistakable.co.nz.

Jedsdad

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#1571711 14-Jun-2016 14:47

Not that desperate and may move to Trustpower for their phone and internet as well as power.

My ETF with Compass for the phone and internet is $199 which expires in November so I can wait

Jedsdad

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frednz

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#1571740 14-Jun-2016 15:15

mdf:

We're with Contact and very happy.

Contact does both power and gas. Headline rates are high, but we get a 22% (?) discount for paying "Online" (no statements, must be paid via direct debit) and "Ontime" (no bouncing cheques).

A feature I really like that I haven't seen elsewhere (though it's been a while since I looked) is "Smoothpay". Basically you estimate your power usage for the year, and pay it in even chunks - we pay fortnightly in accordance with the pay cycle. So (say) you pay on average $100 per month in summer and $300 per month in winter, you might pay $200 throughout the year. You don't pay any more or less, but you avoid winter power shocks. About the only downside is if you don't have a good idea on your actual power usage it can take a couple of months to figure out the right regular payment.

And possibly most importantly (why doesn't everyone do this!?), they have a callback feature on their call centre/help line. "We're sorry, your wait is currently 45 minutes. Would you like to wait on hold or schedule a call back?" Well, thanks for asking, but you know, I'm going to have to go with Option B. Not waiting 45 minutes on hold = happy customer.

Flybuys too if that floats your boat.

Thanks for that information, Contact quoted us 23% discount if we have both gas and power with them, but their gas and electricity prices were a little higher than I expected.

Genesis Energy offers 9722 kWh of gas for $79 per month on a fixed 12-month contract (including GST and fixed daily charge) but no discount applies to this rate. This amounts to $948 including GST etc for a year and I haven't yet found a company that can match this amount for 9722 kWh of gas. However, I haven't checked all the gas suppliers yet.

Our price from Contact for this amount of gas for a fixed term was about $1130 (including GST and after a 23% discount).

Fred

frednz

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#1574695 15-Jun-2016 20:51

Jedsdad:

I use my own Excel Spreadsheet to compare Prices.

It does the calculations for me and gives me a correct answer within 2-3 cents

I prefer to do my own calculations rather than relying on the Powerswitch tool or what a Power Company says I would save

In this example I am comparing Mercury (my power company) and figures from my current bill with 2 others, note the 2 others include GST and the rates include the Lines Company Rates as well as the Electricity Authority Charge.

Mercury shows all the charges separately

Note also Mercury give me 12% discount for prompt payment and Energy Online give 20%

I am a Low User.

I cant change to another company until the end of March next year as it would cost me $150 termination fee but will definitely shop around then

Thanks for this posting, I like your idea of a spreadsheet rather than handwritten comparisons! From my recent experience, before giving you a quote, the power companies want to know your current address and details of you annual consumption so they can determine whether you are a low or high user of gas and electricity.

There certainly is a lot of benefit in shopping around once a year as special "entry" discounts are offered to new customers (which perhaps isn't all that fair to existing customers)!

There is quite a lot of variation between the companies for variable and daily rates and the amount of discount you can be given on your monthly account. Some companies also offer to fix rates for a year or so as a further incentive.

If you are prepared to commit for a 12-month contract which has an early termination fee there are quite good savings to be had as the price is usually fixed for that period. But I'm not really sure whether these contracts are such a good idea as they tie you down for 12 months and you may end up paying more than you would on a standard daily rate, particularly if you are unexpectedly away from your property for an extended period!

Regards

Fred

MikeAqua

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#1574858 16-Jun-2016 09:17

In my (limited) experience these offers commit the consumer but the fine print allows price increases by the retailer i.e. you can end up stuck with someone who increases their prices on you.

I've done what's my number a few times and never seen anything compelling. Most of the suggested plans (based on estimated usage) are 'low user' plans which we don't qualify for ...

frednz:

If you are prepared to commit for a 12-month contract which has an early termination fee there are quite good savings to be had as the price is usually fixed for that period.

Mike

muppet

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#1574887 16-Jun-2016 09:58

Powershop.

For many reasons, their easy-to-use app on my Android, but also their excellent sense of humour.

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