Commercial Gas Electricity

Budget Control has been providing services since March 1999, so has been in existence longer than most buying groups. However, back in 2000 we consistently beat buying group quotations either due to the timing of our purchase and or the small amount of commission requested from the supplier. This was even when Budget Control was obtaining quotations on a single site basis! Our commission request at that time was £25.00 per year for gas and £40.00 per year for electricity, with our contract work being subsidized by fees received relating to backdated rebates on utilities (some from Energy providers who never let the customer see the real suppliers' bills)!

In 2008 we increased our fees to £70.00 commission per annum for gas and £80.00 per annum for electricity and posted this on our web-site. To date we are the only company in the UK to make our fees totally transparent. Even though we have done this recently we quoted for a hotel in London (on our new monthly excels) and received a price nearly £18,000.00 lower than those that the buying group offered! The customer obviously signed for our offer but the buying group objected to them saving money and pointed out that they had a contract in place until 2010 thereby allowing them to object to the transfer and for the buying group to sign the more expensive contract that expired in 2011 (after the contract end date between our client and the buying group)!

For several years Budget Control has purchased far more kWh than most buying groups and together with our after sales service our value for money is second to none. Each month Budget Control purchases gas and electricity for approximately 200 sites and presents our quotation requests on mass excel spreadsheets to the suppliers. This gives our customers' group discount/corporate pricing without in most cases the minimum and maximum take term and condition applying.

So why do we not have a common end date?

The answer is we do not have a crystal ball and are unable to say which day of the year is the best day to buy? Utility markets change daily and as such if say we chose 30/06 as our common end date and this date was the best date to buy then we have been exceptionally lucky, then again if it was the dearest date to buy then we would be exceptionally unlucky. A good comparison is the stocks and shares market.

Whilst a common end date would save Budget Control time and money and allow more "selling" time and therefore increase our customer base it would be irresponsible to gamble with our customer's money in this manner. To invest wisely and safely in the stock market IFA's would advise regular purchasing which evens out the peaks and troughs, this is what we at Budget Control have been doing for several years now and we believe that unless our clients like maximum risk, is the right thing to do. Last year when contracts were expiring and the wholesale markets were extremely high we were able to offer a temporary flexible contract until the market settled back down. This saved the clients whose sites qualified hundreds, thousands and in some cases tens of thousands of pounds. This option was not available from Buying Groups.

Factors that affect utility prices stay as before, these being:

  1. The price of oil.
  2. Supply and demand economics
  3. Lack of storage capability
  4. The value of the £ (When importing utilities and buying Oil)
  5. Finite resources
  6. The least important being the amount purchased

Winter 2009 saw large industrial users being forced to self disconnect due to lack of supply so simply by being a large customer does not give preferential treatment. But imagine if this was the common end date, what price would your utility be?

Budget Control does not have contracts with its clients like some of our competitors and we have been challenged many times over the years with regards to pricing. Even though this has been the case over a 1000 quotations we are the cheapest in over 990 occasions. On the rare occasions when we are beaten on price we recommend that the cheaper price is taken providing that the company offering the price is a reputable company with no hidden terms and conditions, which can affect the starting price by price increase terms and conditions or calorific value manipulation on gas.

To see how much we could save you please send one gas and one electricity bill showing consumption, charges and meter point reference number for gas and meter point administration number for electricity. Please also note that if you are sending your bills for the first time to Budget Control to include your contact numbers as it is highly likely that we could also obtain you a backdated rebate, in addition to just saving you your hard earned money!

An example of our work click here