Look After My Bills Review

The automatic energy switching service Look After My Bills came to prominence when they won funding on BBC's Dragons Den. Like other gas and electric auto switch companies they take the hassle out of constantly having to switch supplier by doing it for you.

Autoswitch energy companies find you a cheap deal and switch you over to your new povider on your behalf, essentially saving you time and hassle. There are now several gas and electricity switching services and Look After My Bills is currently the largest.

Who is Behind Look After My Bills?

It all started with the guys behind The Big Deal collective energy switching service, namely Will Hodson and Henry de Zoete in January 2018.

By March 2018 they had secured investment and graduated from the renowned Silicon Valley based start-up accelerator Y Combinator.

What really shot the company to prominence was their appearance on Dragons Den on August 2018. Here they struck a deal with Jenny Campbell and Tej Lalvani securing a further £120,000 investment.

Since the Look After My Bills Dragons Den appearance they have amassed more than 200,000 customers. They are now part of the GoCo Group along with fellow auto switching service WeFlip, GoCompare and EnergyLinx who monitor prices.

At the time of writing LAMB has had a design overhaul and the site works much better and feels more useable. The first thing I like is its simplicity and the fact you do not have to provide all your personal details up front.

How Do Look After My Bills Make Money?

The switching service they offer is free so how does Look After My Bills make money? They only make money if they are able to switch you to a cheaper provider as they get a commission when they switch you.

It does mean that there may be much cheaper energy suppliers on the market that can offer you a better deal directly with them or through a comparison site.

How Look After My Bills Works

If you want the absolute cheapest price and are willing to do a little more work then the best thing to do is use an energy price comparison site. I've already written about how to get the cheapest gas and electric quotes where I explain the little tricks you can use to beat the system and get the absolute best deal for your circumstances.

You can switch to a fixed rate deal or a variable tariff and even switch if you are on a prepayment meter.

In order to get your initial quote you only have to enter a few details about your current supplier such as who they are and how much gas and electricity you use. Whilst most customers are on dual fuel tariffs you can still compare electricity prices only to find a cheaper electricity supplier such as in the case of economy 7 users.

Any time you want to compare prices with any online price comparison site you need to know your annual kWh usage for gas and electricity. This is the most accurate way of getting an accurate comparison. There's really no point in doing so if you do not have this information to hand as you'll just be wasting your time.

What you need to compare with LAMB

As with any comparison you need to enter your specific energy usage details in order to compare what you are currently paying to see if there are any cheaper deals out there.

All the information you need will be on your current utility bill or statement. It is better to enter your actual gas and electricity usage in kWh to get the most accurate information. Below are the questions they will ask you.

Do you use gas and electric or are you electric only?

Most households in the UK have gas heating but you may not be on mains gas and have oil heating or live in a flat without mains gas and have electric storage heaters.

Are you a dual fuel customer, do you get your gas and electricity from the same energy supplier?

Most customers are on a dual fuel tariff as this is usually the most convenient option. If you are on electric only or get your electric and gas from different suppliers you need to specify this.

Do you have a smart meter?

If you have a SMETs1 first generation meter and want to switch some other suppliers the meter may not send readings automatically. It won't stop you switching but you may have to go back to reading the meter again until your smart meter is upgraded.

Are you on economy 7?

Economy 7 tariffs are different to standard single rate tariffs. If you are on economy 7 then you will have separate day and night time electric readings.

Who is your current supplier?

You current supplier is needed so that they can compare against other suppliers.

How do you currently pay for your energy?

You need to select how you currently pay for your gas and electric. The options are monthly or quarterly direct debit, pay on receipt of bill or a prepayment customer.

Do you know what tariff you are on?

To get an accurate like for like comparison you need to say which tariff you are currently. This information will be on your current bill.

If you are still within the terms of a 12 month fixed deal and there are exit fees then LAMB will not switch you. However if you are on an expensive fixed deal then it may be worth switching using an energy comparison website if the savings are greater than the exit fees.

How much energy do you use?

Supply monthly, quarterly or yearly cost or kWh figures. If you have your bill handy then enter your annual kWh gas and electricity usage. You can get these from your latest energy statement or bill. If not then enter your monthly direct debit costs.

Do you want renewable energy only?

They specifically ask if you want to just look at green energy deals only. Answering no means they will look at all available tariffs and not just renewable electricity ones.

Are you eligible for the warm home discount?

You may be eligible for the warm home discount and as this is only available from the larger suppliers you need to specify if you are eligible so they can compare just warm home discount scheme suppliers.

If you do get the warm home discount but you are on an expensive tariff the savings you make switching to a cheaper tariff from a non warm home discount provider may be far greater than the warm home discount itself. It's worth checking this by using an energy comparison site to see if you could save more.

Will I get a Good Deal with LAMB?

As with all the auto energy switching reviews I do here we use Ofgem's average kWh usage figures for the comparison. If you are currently with one of the Big Six suppliers you will certainly save money by switching.

Look After My Bills November 2020 Update

If you want to know what a company is like then a one off review isn't going to be as helpful as an ongoing review that looks at how the service performs over the longer term. So with that here is an update of the auto switching company Look After My Bills.

As always I use the same comparison criteria so that you get an honest comparison based on all of your options for switching to a new supplier to save money. We take an average UK household that uses 3,100 kWh of electricity and 12,000 kWh of gas annually.

November 2020 see LAMB's suggested switch to Utility Point's 'Just Up 20 Wk46 v2' tariff which would cost £83 a month (about £996 a year). This is a 12 month fixed tariff with a £72 dual fuel exit fee should you choose to leave before the end of the years fixed rate deal.

The rates for this tariff are 22.260p per day for the electricity standing charge and 16.330p per kWh for every unit of electricity that you use. The gas standing charge is 22.260p per day with a gas unit rate of 2.720p per kWh.

The cheapest switchable deal (where the company does the switch for you) offered by a straight energy comparison is the Energy Plus Protection Jan 2022v4 tariff from British Gas costing £74.13 a month (£889.56 a year). The dual fuel exit fees for this tariff are £40.

The rates for this tariff are 17.58p per day for the electricity standing charge and 15.003p per kWh for every unit of electricity that you use. The gas standing charge is 13.89p per day with a gas unit rate of 2.580p per kWh.

Is it a good deal?

To know if you are getting a good deal by using Look After My Bills to manage your gas and electricity bill switching you need to take two things into consideration. Firstly how much time and hassle they are saving you and how much money you are saving compared to the other options.

For our November 2020 comparison LAMB would cost us £83 a month but would handle our ongoing comparison and switching, saving us some hassle making it the most hands off option. For comparison the most expensive equivalent deal on the market at the time is the Online Fix and Save December 2021 tariff from Scottish Power costing £91.83 a month.

An equivalent deal can be had at a cheaper price of £74.13 a month by doing the comparison yourself and the comparison service will handle the switch for you but you'll need to remember to do a comparison next year when your deal comes to an end.

Your last option which most people shy away from as it is a little more complicated and takes longer is to find the best price and switch directly with the supplier. In this case you'd need to switch manually with PFP Energy to their Fixed - November 2021 - Green v2 Paperless Billing tariff costing £69.08 a month which is the cheapest 1 year fixed deal at the time of this comparison.

You need to decide on a balance of saving time, hassle and complexity and saving money. The most automated option is to switch with Look after my bills but if you wanted to be more in control and do a comparison yourself every year you could save yourself an additional £8.87 a month by doing the comparison yourself.

Lastly if you have the time and knowledge to compare the whole of the market and switch yourself you could save a further £5.05 a month.

Comparing LAMB vs Energy Helpline (June 2020)

Energy Helpline is an energy comparison site and is one of the websites listed by Ofgem for gas and electric price comparisons. We are comparing the cheapest energy deal from Energy Helpline with what Look After My Bills offers.

For our comparison we are giving the same details to both sites to see which gives us the best deal. By using the same details such as current energy supplier, postcode and actual annual kWh gas and electricity usage we can do a fair direct comparison.

Look after my bills recommends a switch to People's Energy tariff 'People's Energy Fixed Tariff May 20 v2' which would cost £850.54 a year or £70.88 per month by direct debit.

Energy Helpline recommends a switch to 'Green Power (1 Year) v6 + Free Boiler Service' tariff from Tonik Energy costing £809.24 or £67.44 per month.

In this comparison you can save £41.30 more by using an Ofgem accredited comparison engine like Energy Helpline.

The benefit of using LAMB is that although you won't save as much it takes the hassle out of comparing. The downside is that you are using a third party to manage your switch so don't have total control.

My recommendation is that if you don't want the worry about checking an switching yourself then use an automatic energy switching service like LAMB.

If you prefer to be in control and are willing to do a comparison yourself once a year you can save more money by using comparison site Energy Helpline.

It doesn't cost anything to check so you can repeat what I have done here and compare Look After My Bills and Energy Helpline yourself using your own details to see how much you could save. The important point here is to compare as like most households in the UK you are probably paying too much for your gas and electric.

Comparison of LAMB vs Switchd (February 2020)

Back in 2019 we compared LAMB to see what their cheapest offering was for the average energy user in the UK. Doing the same comparison again in 2020 we can see that the cheapest tariff is £72 per month through Simplicity's 2020Potato1 tariff (I'm guessing someone gets paid to make up these tariff names) which is slightly cheaper than the £73.58 quoted last year. The lower costs are likely due to the reduction in wholesale costs over the last year.

Entering the same details into Switchd a similar auto switching company gives us the Utility Point Just Up 20 Wk06 Direct v2 tariff at £63.20 per month which is a considerably cheaper offering.

Comparison of LAMB vs Switchd (May 2019)

At the time of the review Look After My Bills quoted iSupplyEnergy's Discover Green 12 months 04v1 tariff as the deal to switch to coming in at £87 a month.

They will compare tariffs and switch suppliers to the cheapest energy deals for you.

So to get a comparison on price I always to compare to Switchd so we have some sort of reference point. Comparing the same usage figures on Switchd the comparison comes out at £73.58 switching to Utility Point's Just Up 19 Wk15 Direct tariff. That works out at about a tenner cheaper compared to using Look After My Bill's auto switching service.

Are Look After My Bills Any Good?

Is Look After My Bills any good compared to other automatic switching services? Like all auto switch sites they check which supplier is offering a better price and then switching you to the cheapest utility provider. Most companies will, just like LAMB, inform you first as you still have the 14 day cooling off period to change your mind. As a switching service they do what they say on the tin.

Is Look After My Bills Genuine? Yes, I rank them 8 out of 10 as they are an established (currently the biggest) auto energy switcher in the UK. Although at the time of writing Switchd offers a much cheaper deal offering a lower cost tariff at our first check back in May 2019 and even better deal in February 2020.

Be sure to check out our BillBuddy review if you are considering comparing more than just your gas and electric supplier.

How to cancel Look After My Bills

Should you decide that you no longer want them to manage your energy switching then you have to email them at support@lookaftermybills.com with the subject line of 'CANCELLATION' then in the message state your full name, first line of address and postcode.

Cancelling the service will not cancel whatever energy deal you are currently on and will allow you to let another auto-switching service manage the switches for you or do the comparing and switching yourself.

Look after my bills login

Once you are signed up to the Look After My Bills auto energy switching service an account is created for you. You can login to the website with your username and password to access your account. This is the direct link to the Look after my bills login.

Look After My Bills Public Reviews

The customer reviews on both Trustpilot and Google are very positive and there are a good number of them. On the whole people tend to be pleased with their level of customer service..

The negative reviews tend to be on the theme of the actual switching process. One point that seems relevant is that when you use a service like LAMB or any other automatic switching company they will switch you to a new supplier if they are cheaper.

A lot of stress seems to come from the fact most people do not understand or really want to understand how energy suppliers work. A common hurdle is when customers find that they have had the first direct debit taken from their bank early on.

Small energy suppliers work on tight margins and do not have the financial resources of the larger more established suppliers. Therefore they tend to charge you at the start of your first month rather than after the first month.

If potentially paying 2 direct debits in one month (one to your old supplier and one to the new one) during the 4 to 6 weeks switching process then use a standard energy comparison tool such as Energy Helpline and choose from one of the Big Six suppliers.

Energy Comparisons versus Look After My Bills

The main difference between using an automatic energy comparison service such as LAMB compared to doing an energy comparison yourself is that with Look After My Bills you don't have to worry about ever having to do another manual energy comparison.

As with anything there is always a compromise. Automatic energy switching does not guarantee a switch to the absolute cheapest rate. The reason for this is that services like LAMB will only switch you to an energy supplier that they have a financial agreement with. They may also omit companies that offer a poor customer service.

They might remind you when your contract is up for renewal but you will pay £150.00 to £200.00 more than the cheapest offer around at the time. - James (Trustpilot Review)

The above quote taken from a Trustpilot review left by an unhappy Look After My Bills customer illustrates where auto switch sites let some customers down.

This is not to say an automated service is not appropriate for all customers. If you are the sort of customer who is not comfortable with doing comparisons or is unlikely to want to or remember to compare and switch every year then the service provided by Look After My Bills is appropriate.

I have been with the same energy supplier for over 25 years and never bothered about changing as thought all the hype about saving money was far-fetched. OMG! How wrong I was! I have saved nearly £200 and it only took me minutes to complete. - Susan Galligan (Trustpilot Review)

This second review from Trustpilot from a happy Look After My Bills customer illustrates this point. The £200 saving Susan made is due to the fact that she had never switched from British Gas. She could have saved even more by switching to a one of the cheap gas and electric suppliers but Susan may not have been confident enough investigate further.

The important thing here is that she switched to a cheaper deal and saved money.

You will find that the first time you switch energy suppliers will be where you make the largest savings. You can save £248 to £479 by using an energy comparison site but this substantial saving is because most consumers have not switched before or have not done so for over a year.

If you switch regularly, by regularly I mean once a year, you will not make as big a saving by switching as you did the first time. However if you do not compare and switch each year or after your 2 or 3 year fixed energy deal ends you will end up on your energy suppliers standard variable or evergreen tariff. It's the rate all energy companies charge their customers that do not switch to a better deal.

Is it going to save me money?

Most people are going to save money by switching using an automated switching website. However staying in control and comparing the whole of the market means that you are more likely to get a better deal.

There is a trade off between using automation to manage your energy comparison and switching and doing a comparison yourself and if needed switching directly with the supplier rather than through a third party. Automated services are attractive for the reason they make the whole process more hands off.

Sometimes however switching is not going to save you money and reduce your future bills. If you happen to be on a fixed price tariff, especially a longer term fix of 18 months to 3 years then you would be looking to get the best deal not one that is cheaper than your current one.

If you've been paying 11 pence per kWh for the last 3 years then it's highly likely energy prices have increased during that time. Say the average price for electricity is now 15p per kWh and your fixed term deal is coming to an end. You have the choice of switching to your current energy providers standard variable rate (these are usually very costly) or choosing a new tariff.

So if you did a comparison based on what you had been paying (11p per kWh) then all tariffs across the whole of the market will appear to be more expensive, However they won't be as expensive as your current energy companies standard variable rate that you will get moved onto if you don't choose a new energy tariff.

You need to compare the tariff you are likely to move to with your current utility with what's on offer from the rest of the market.

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I had a wonderful experience with Look After My Bills and will definitely recommend them! The process was easy, the staff I spoke with were very helpful and most importantly, they saved me money. Thanks again.

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I highly recommend Look After My Bills. It was quick and easy to get started, and I saved over £100 on my energy bill. I even had the option to go for renewables only, which I obviously did, because I'm not a monster! I hate shopping around for good deals on energy bills, it's sooooo boring. But I'll never have to do it again. Haleiloo!

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I’ve been with Look After My Bills for a few years now. They’ve saved me money every year. They’re efficient and fast. & they listen to clients. Eg, when, one year, I asked to be changed not because of price but because the supplier I was with had appalling customer service, they responded immediately, and changed my supplier without question. Quite honestly, I can’t fault them.

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