Out of the top six energy providers, three have withdrawn their cheapest deals on the market over the past few weeks and replaced them with tariffs that are an inflation busting average of 3.4 per cent more expensive.
Moneysupermarket.com has urged customers to move quickly to take advantage of the best tariffs currently available, which still give dual fuel customers a saving of £259 a year compared to the average Standard tariff, before they too disappear.
According to moneysupermarket.com, npower, Scottish Power and SSE Atlantic have pulled their best deals - Sign Online 18, Online Energy Reward, Online Fixed Price respectively - have been removed from the market to new customers.
On average the tariffs that replace them are 3.4% more expensive. The changes mean that the cheapest remaining energy deals on the market are E.ON's Save Online v2 and First Utility iSave v3.
Scott Byrom, utilities manager at moneysupermarket.com, said “ With wholesale energy prices hitting a year-high last week we fully expect to see more of the best deals for new customers being pulled and, at some stage this year, prices for existing customers will start to creep up.”
“Switching to a new dual fuel deal today (could) save quarterly cash or cheque customers around 22% of their annual energy spend.”
Here are the standard, fixed and online/best energy tariffs offered by the ‘Big Six’ providers:
