It may sound like a dumb question, but it’s not as easy to choose the cheapest gas supplier as you might think. In principle, all you need to do is look at the cost and choose the cheapest. Unfortunately, you have to know what you are looking at in order to be able to compare power prices.
When it comes down to it, all the gas suppliers are selling the same thing, namely gas. Where they differ – which is where it gets confusing – is that they all have their own ways of working out the cost, and passing it on to you.
You will find that the best gas suppliers often have discount offers, where they will offer the gas at, say, 30% off the base price. This is great, but you need to check exactly what is being discounted, as it can make a big difference to how much you pay. 30% off the whole bill is significantly better than 30% off the cost of the gas alone, leaving you to pay the full transport and service costs. Don’t just compare 30% off from one company against 40% off from another without checking what is being discounted.
As I mentioned in an earlier article, the cheapest gas supplier isn’t necessarily the best gas supplier. It is important to consider the level of service, which is something you can check by reading the reviews that the comparison sites usually have. Again, re-read my earlier article for more on this.
It’s worth a look at the terms and conditions for the gas suppliers, as they all have slightly different terms, and you want to make sure there’s nothing nasty lurking in the small print. This is not so likely nowadays as there is such strict regulation on even the cheapest gas and electricity suppliers, but it’s worth checking.
The good news is that most of the sites that allow you to compare power prices will show you an estimated monthly or annual bill, so you can see exactly how much you’re going to pay overall. This should be your main deciding factor, closely followed by the customer reviews.
Hopefully you won’t find it too hard to choose the cheapest gas supplier if you use comparison sites that are pretty well laid out and easy to use.