HOW DO I GET ELECTRIC IRELAND LOYALTY DEAL?
Q Electric Ireland is giving its customers (including me) a range of discounts. What do I have to do to avail of them? What’s the catch? A Discounts ranging from 4% to 8.5% will be applied to customers’ accounts automatically. So there’s no need to do anything. Here’s how it works:
The average dual-fuel customer who pays by direct debit and receives online bills would ‘save around €150’, said Eoin Clarke, head of comparison site switcher. ie
‘It could also spell good news for other energy customers in the market, as we’ve seen a real battle to win customers over the last year and this could heat things up again.’
So why are they doing this? Fuel suppliers, just like TV and broadband firms, lure customers with attractive offers that run out after a year or so at which point you end up paying through the nose.
Electric Ireland deserves some credit for reducing standard pricing for loyal customers. But it still saves the juiciest rewards for new customers – such as a €175 online switching bonus on its Standard Domestic Gas (direct debit and online billing) tariff.
‘The biggest saving is still to be made by switching suppliers,’ said Mr Clarke.
‘The average dual-fuel customer can save €402.’
Meanwhile, Flogas offers a 22% discount to new customers.
See Best Buys below for other good deals. Q Last year I earned €13,905 plus my State pension. I paid USC of €176.91. Should I still be paying USC after it was reduced in the last Budget? A I’m afraid so. All State pensions are exempt from USC, so you pay it only on your €13,905 earnings. In 2016, you paid 1% on earnings up to €12,012 and 3% on the balance.
This year, those rates have been cut to 0.5% and 2.5%.
So in 2017, if you earned the same sum, your bill would be €107.38, saving you just over €70.
That assumes you have no increase in earnings. Most people do get increases but the USC thresholds don’t rise to reflect that.
That’s one of the many sneaky ways the Government claws back money from us. Q We are ‘sale agreed’ on a house. We negotiated a €20k price cut on the basis of faults found in the survey. Can we still borrow the same amount we were approved for (based on the original price of €290k) and keep the extra €20k to do repairs? A The mortgage rules base the amount you can borrow on the value of the house. And you can’t really argue that a house is worth more than you pay for it! So, as first-time buyers, you can only borrow 90% of €270k – €243k.
However, you could ask your lender for extra money.
Around 15% of loans are allowed to exceed the Central Bank guidelines. Q I took your advice and subscribed to a health insurance plan (Laya) that pays back €500 on routine medical expenses – nearly half of the premium.
I easily ran up a lot of expenses for GP, A&E, dental and optical care. But do I have to wait until the end of the year to claim for these? A Not if you use Laya Healthcare’s app, which allows you to upload receipts and make claims as you go along. This is a great idea as it solves the annual hassle of hunting down receipts from a year earlier and posting them off. Under the old system, many legitimate claims go astray or remain unclaimed.