• Getting £65 of your own money back in a year’s time is poor compensation for overpaying customers.
• Home energy switchers could save £400 every year.

Here at Switchd.co.uk, we welcome Ofgem’s recent announcement ensuring customers overpaying for gas and electricity by Direct Debit will get an automatic repayment from 2022.  However, we think there are far bigger savings UK households can make by switching their energy suppliers more frequently. Auto-switching - which takes the hassle out of having to research the market and switch yourself – saves our members on average £400 a year on gas and electricity.

Our co-founder Llewellyn says “Customers all over the country will welcome the opportunity to get an automatic refund from their energy provider. Direct Debits are often set for a whole year, and it can be hard to predict the customer’s energy usage. So the providers err on the side of caution, from their perspective at least, and set the monthly payments to be a little higher than might really be necessary. As Ofgem points out, this has led to them holding on to £1.4billion of customer money. But that is only the tip of the iceberg when you consider households are losing out on £400 a year by not switching providers.”

Fellow co-founder Tom mentions “One of the reasons people don’t switch providers is that they think it’s going to be a hassle. At Switchd, we’ve built lots of clever technology that takes all the hassle away from customers - our tech scans the market constantly, looking for the best deal. When we find the right one, we let the customer know and we can begin the switching process.”

Although customers might be familiar with comparison sites for changing energy suppliers, auto-switching is a relatively new concept.

Tom continues, “It’s really important that our members get to benefit from all the deals on the market, not just those who give a backhander to a comparison site. We ask for a small membership fee - typically less than £2 per month - but get nothing back from the energy companies. That means we’re truly on our members’ side, finding them much better deals, and saving on average £400 per year, £120 more than a comparison site.

Reclaiming cash from overpaid Direct Debits is one thing, being on the best deal for you is something altogether different!”