How to Avoid Paying Too Much for Business Gas and Electricity

Your business could be paying more than is necessary for gas and electricity from your supplier. If you don’t understand how the business gas and electricity industry operates, then you could easily end up paying twice your current rate next year. That’s a huge increase for any business to try to absorb, and we want to show you what you can do to ensure that doesn’t happen.

The Rollover Problem

If you have a contract with a supplier, you probably signed up for a year to two, thinking you would be locked into some rates that provide you with cheap gas and electricity for your business. While those rates may stay the same for the duration of the contract, what happens afterward? If you thought that your supplier would contact you and try to give you some great rates, you might want to think again. Better yet, you should look at the details of the contract you signed and the terms and conditions that apply to your contract’s end.

What you will probably find is that the contract rolls over if you don’t specifically ask to terminate it. This means that once your current contract expires, the supplier will assume you want to renew your contract and will do so automatically for you at a higher rate. That higher rate can be as much as twice of what you agreed to pay. You agreed to the rollover and price hike in your contract when you signed it at first, but you may not have realised that if you didn’t read the small print and didn’t pay much attention to what happens when your current contract ends.

Of course, the suppliers know you don’t want to pay increased rates, but they are counting on businesses to not pay much attention to the terms and conditions they signed up for so that they will end up paying the new higher rates for at least a little while.

This rollover process happens to a lot of businesses who think they are getting cheap gas and electricity for their business but actually don’t realize what is going to happen when their current contract ends. They probably think that they will just need to find a new supplier or that the current supplier will ask them if they want to renegotiate their contract and sign up for a new contract. While that makes sense to them as being the customer-centric way to do business, that’s not how most suppliers work, and the business owners with contracts out there need to understand that.

Fixing the Problem

If you don’t know what happens with your current contract and rates when the contract ends, then you need to look into it right now, no matter how far away your contract end is. You need to be aware of what is going to occur so that you can be ready for it. In a month or two ahead of your contract end, you should be talking to your supplier and finding out what the new rates will be on the renewed contract if you decide to go that route. If they don’t provide you with solid rate details or you don’t like the answer they give you, then you can use that time ahead of your contract’s expiration to find a new supplier.

Once you have found another supplier for your gas and electricity, you can let your current supplier know that you want to cancel your contract when it is fulfilled. You may be able to end the contract sooner and switch supplier mid-contract, but that’s not always a wise decision, especially if you only have a few more months on your contract.

If you would like to know where to find lower prices than what you are currently paying, then you can use any price comparison site for gas and electricity business rates. These free resources allow you to easily search for rates based on your business needs and find a variety of rates and suppliers to pick from. Once you find a rate and supper you like, then you can let them know when your current contract is ending and set up a start day for a new contract with the new supplier so that your power supply would not be interrupted. If you have communicated with both your current supplier and the new supplier, then you should not experience any interruption of service.