Want to cut €700 a year from your bills? Then just flick that switch...
Savvy shoppers are switching online to get best deals from broadband and power firms
Are your household bills getting you down? You could cut them by €700 with a few clicks of a mouse or a few phone calls. Switching energy providers alone can knock over €400 per year off your gas and electricity bills.
And another €330 in savings is on offer by getting the best deal for TV and broadband services.
It’s not even hard: comparison websites such Switcher.ie and Bonkers. ie do most of the work for you.
In fairness, the Irish are already the savviest energy users in the EU, switching supplier more than any other nationality.
We had the highest rate for swapping gas supplier (16%) and the second highest rate for electricity at 14%, according to a new report from the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER).
Yet the other side of the coin is that over eight out of 10 of us are still coughing up hundreds of euro a year more than we need to by not shopping around.
The latest CER report shows Energia had the cheapest discounted electricity plan, and Flogas had the cheapest plan for gas, from July to September 2016.
And both of these companies are still offering the best deals, according to Switcher.ie ( see table, inset right).
Flogas and Energia are currently offering savings of €176 and €226 respectively over standard plans – or €402 together.
Interestingly, though, it doesn’t always pay to bundle your gas and electricity bills into a single dualfuel deal.
The best dual-fuel deal (Energia again) will save you €323.
The market is set up to reward switchers with great short-term offers that soon turn into high standard rates when the discounts run out. Suppliers rely on consumer inertia to ensure that most people stay put and rack up higher bills, generating more than enough profits to pay off the savvy switching minority.
‘Loyalty to one provider doesn’t pay,’ says Eoin Clarke, managing director of Switcher.ie.
‘Some suppliers are now offering retention deals to try to hold on to customers, but by far the biggest
savings can be made by moving to a new provider – with discounts of up to 33% on some plans.’
In the six months to last September, just under 80,000 people switched electricity supplier and 23,000 changed gas provider.
Winning the price war helped Flogas win a thousand more gas customers in the period, largely at the expense of Bord Gáis Energy.
Yet Bord Gáis was the biggest gainer of new electricity customers, adding over 4,000.
Electric Ireland lost a whopping 18,791 households in six months, according to the CER.
Switching can be done in a matter of minutes.
Many people switch after reps call to their door and alert them to better deals.
You can save money that way but you’re better off researching fully the deals on offer from all companies yourself rather than relying on a salesman.
A handy way to do this is through a price-comparison website.
‘You need a latest copy of your gas and electricity bill, and the GPRN and MPRN details listed on these bills,’ Switcher advises on its website. ‘Knowing your annual energy consumption in kWh will enable you to make the most accurate supplier comparison and give you a good idea how much you can save by switching.
‘To complete the process, you’ll need your current meter reading so your old supplier can provide you with a final bill and your new supplier can start from that point.’
In contrast to the energy market, it does pay to bundle your TV, phone and broadband services together. You can save hundreds of euros by picking the cheapest TV/broadband/phone ‘triple-play package’ – as the comparison websites call them.
Sky’s latest triple-play offer – for €684 a year – would save you €330 a year compared to standard tariffs.
It costs €57 per month but, crucially, this lasts for all 12 months of a one-year contract.
After 12 months are up you’re free to get another juicy offer from Sky or elsewhere.
Other offers have pitfalls like 18-month contracts – or attractive monthly payments that only last for six months before soaring.
It’s also worth considering getting landline thrown into the deal even if you don’t think you need one.
‘Dual-play’ deals – that is, just TV and broadband with no phone – sometimes don’t cost that much more than triple-play offers with free landlines and calls also included.
Sky’s dual play package, for example, costs €55 per month – just €2 less than its triple-play deal with a free off-peak calls.
Irish paid TV customers have an average of 155 channels – but most of us (65%) watch less than a quarter of what we pay for.
So we can save money by slimming down our digital TV guide, according to new research from Switcher.ie.
Just 2% of people watch more than three-quarters of the channels that they pay for, while 9% watch between half and three-quarters.
We are still a nation that’s glued to the goggle box, watching on average 13 hours per week. Around one in five (21%) of us settle in for a whopping 21 hours or more of TV viewing every week, according to Switcher.ie’s survey.
This suggests that we’re returning to the same channels again and again, and so the TV packages we’re paying for might not be the right ones for our viewing habits or needs. In terms of how we watch, live TV is still prominent, with around two in five of us (42%) watching the majority of our TV this way.
Just over a fifth of us (21%) mainly watch free-to-air TV such as RTÉ.
At the same time, habits are clearly changing, with another 21% saying the majority of TV they watch is recorded on to a set-top box.
Other more recent innovations are also gaining ground – more than one in 10 (11%) now watch the majority of their TV content via paid streaming services such as Netflix, while 5% say they mostly watch free streaming services, like the RTÉ or TV3 players.
Increasingly, we watch TV where and when they want, with the majority of people using multi-room viewing (65%), and pause, rewind, record functionality (58%) on a daily basis.
One in four watch free box sets with their TV package every day, while one in five watch catch-up TV every day.
If you don’t want to downgrade your TV plan, try to make the most of the freebies that come with your package.
Many providers now have apps so you can tune in or set recordings on the move.
And several providers also offer on-demand and exclusive content for subscribers at no extra cost.
Some providers also offer free Netflix for the first six months of your TV contract, or cashback when you sign up, which is worth taking into account.
If you’re happy with fewer channels, another option you can always go for free-to-air TV.
You’ll need some equipment – like an aerial and set-top box – and there are set-up costs involved, but you’ll be free from ongoing subscription fees.