By Kate Harvey
Content Manager | Pou Whakahaere Ihirangi
Do you know there’s a simple question you could be asking your power company that may bring down your power bills?
All you have to ask is: ‘Am I on the best power plan?’.
Since April, your power company must tell you if it has a plan that would be better for you. But you do have to ask.
We decided to see how easy it is to get this info from power companies by getting 10 Consumer NZ staff members to ask the simple question – using a template we’ve prepared (see the bottom of this page).
We can confirm it was very easy!
All 10 of us got a reply from our power companies. Two were told the power company had a cheaper plan they could use. One found out he could be getting a discount on electricity and gas for having both with the same company.
So, three out of the 10 will be saving money on their power bills just by asking.
Andrea, our head of finance, had been on a low-user plan with Genesis, and was told a standard-user plan would be better.
“I have probably known for a while that I wasn’t on the best plan but didn’t have the headspace to look into it, so this was just a good little nudge for me to do something about it and check,” Andrea said.
“I would definitely recommend others give it a go. All I needed to do to switch to the better plan was reply to their email confirming that was what I wished to do and then it all happened seamlessly.”
Annette, who verifies all the information we publish at Consumer, is also with Genesis and was told she’d be better off on the low-user plan, rather than the standard one she was on.
Both Andrea and Annette also got 50 free hours of power for signing onto their new plans.
Keen to give it a go? Just send your power company an email using this text:
I have an electricity account with you. My details are:
Name:
Address:
Account number:
Please share information about my power usage and what plans you have that would be suitable and better for me.
We’d love to hear if our template helps you get a better power deal – please email [email protected] and let us know!
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