I've heard about this since last year, and have done research here and there but have been afraid to try! But now I really need to look into it to try to save some $! Does where you live offer this? How does it work? How is your experience?
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Yes, for electricity. We change pretty regularly. The market is pretty competitive in Texas. Be aware of the "fees" when you are looking at rates. Texas power commission has a pretty good website for doing shopping. I'm not sure if your state has such a thing.
The actual process of changing is pretty easy. We've typically done it online and they just come and do final/first readings of the meter. The meter or lines don't change.
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@MamaG: We do.. I've been browsing! Yeah I think the easy part is after... The local utility company is still in charge of delivering, etc. But it's kinda scary with so many different options!
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Wow. Everywhere I've ever lived has no options for utlities, there's only one place you can use.
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I did for electricity and I regret it. I knew we'd have to pay the utility co. a fee once we made the switch, but they were deliberately vague about how it got calculated, and the fee ended up coming out to something like 5x what I had estimated. I also made a huge mistake when I switched because it was right after our highest usage months and they used those months to calculate the fee. I am still kicking myself about it, and I'm honestly not sure if we will save any money at all at this point.
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@catlady: what the heck! that sucks!! lesson learned for sure... maybe you will still be able to negotiate a lower rate next time knowing what you know now! part of me is scared to change to in case it doesn't pan out the way I think it would!
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Electricity - yes, but you gotta read ALL the fine print about their charges. So even though they might offer the lowest rate, their other fees might make them one of the highest providers - ouch!
Gas - no. There's only one provider available.
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@snowjewelz: Our recent experience hasn't been stellar, but it won't stop me from doing it again. The billing system at our current provider is poor. They are a smaller provider and just couldn't keep up. In the first three months, we didn't get our bills for two months. To the point we received a disconnect notice. I should have realized the bills were missing, but didn't. At that time the only electronic billing option they had was to auto draft our account which I wasn't comfortable with. They have since improved their billing system significantly.
I've been in this house for seven years and we have probably been through at least 4 electric companies. I have no loyalty. I just need electricity and refuse to pay a premium for it.
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@MamaG: I agree!
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We had the option to pick our electric company, but not gas.
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I'm actually blown away that this is a thing. Here power is (mostly) run by the province; and that's it. And the default is a 60 day billing period - although if you're smart you can set yourself for 12 equal payments so it's higher in the summer but you aren't stuck with a $400+ Bill in the winter either.
ETA: I don't know if it's different for homeowners but I've always had heat+water combined in apartments.
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For electric, yes. Our gas is a co-op so we can't.
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Our electricity is through a public utilities district so that's not an option. But electric rates are some of the lowest here in the NW.
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We can't for gas, but we did for our electric and it costs far less than it did. It cut our bill in half.
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I didn't even know this existed! In our city, it's one company for electric and one for gas...there are no options, so they can charge whatever they want and we can't do a thing!
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@rattles: wow, that's great!
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Didn't even know people could do this! We only have one power option, run by the province.
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