Topic: How to find the best deal for your electricity and gas
Why do you need or want this?
It’s been a cold winter so it’s a good idea to try and get the best deal on electricity and gas. No-one wants to get a huge power bill in your letterbox once winter is over. Our secret weapon for finding you the best deal is a government website called Energy Made Easy. This site will compare all the different offers from the energy retailers available to you. As we said, it’s run by the Australian Energy Regulator (Australian government) and it has been designed to help you choose the best company to go with for your power bills.
What can it do?
You can search on this website for new energy offers, compare your household’s electricity usage with other similar households in your area, and get tips on how to make your house more energy efficient.
To use it, simply go to the site and select the residential button in the ‘Compare energy offers’ box on the home page. Then select what offers you want to compare – gas, electricity or both, and then type in your postcode. If you know what your are paying now and how much energy you used over the last billing period, put that in as well. It will then show you all the available offers for your area.
Best features:
One of the best features is a section where it shows you how to read and understand your energy bill. Plus, it will allow you to select up to three offers to compare side-by-side so you see which offer is the best.
You can also get information on contracts, billing and your rights when purchasing energy. 
What should you look out for?
When you are given an offer from a retailer on the site, it will have an Energy Price Fact Sheet, which includes the offer identification number. If you find an offer you are interested in, you can contact the retailer and quote this number.
A great thing about this site is that by Retail Law, the retailers have to give Energy Made Easy all of their current generally available electricity and gas offers.
The other excellent feature about Energy Made Easy is that it’s run by the Australian Energy Regulator – so it’s not a commercial site which is making money out of this. It has been set up to make sure you get information on all of the offers available and you can make a decision about what is best for you.
Another big help is the fact if you want to take up one of the offers on the site there’s a link from the site to the retailer’s website. You can go there and your new retailer will arrange for your service to be switched over. That makes switching so much easier!!
But just before you switch over, you may want to check with your current retailer if you have to pay any exit fees and if they are able to provide a better offer.
