The most common answer to the question, ‘why switch gas and electric supplier?’ is ‘to get a cheaper deal’. You might be prompted to take the decision by wanting a fixed tariff to protect you when prices are on the rise; or maybe you have been notified that your fuel company are going to put prices up. You may just be concerned that your current deal isn’t a good one. It’s the transition from thinking about it to doing it that’s the problem.

The whole point of privatisation from the consumer’s point of view was to create a competitive market for energy in which switching supplier would be simple, and so companies would compete to offer the best deals and attract business. The reality is that most of us find the idea of switching daunting, and are unsure of the process itself, let alone whether it will save us money in the end.

Hopefully, Ofgem’s recent tariff reforms will make fair comparisons easier to make, and the process itself is actually surprisingly simple. If you follow it through, you may be able to save hundreds of pounds a year.

The first step to take is to work out what your usage is. If you have been in a property for more than a year, working out usage should be a simple matter of looking at the bills you’ve received. Even if you don’t get bills as such, the supplier or is obliged to send out annual statements showing consumption. A meter reading should have been taken at the point you moved in.

If you find it difficult to work out your consumption, you can call your supplier and ask what your usage was over the last year. That information should be readily available, and if you haven’t been at your present address for as much as a year, they should still be able to give you an estimate of what your annual use is likely to be, based on your current consumption.

Unfortunately, that won’t be completely accurate. If you have wall and loft insulation and double-glazed windows, then the difference between summer and winter use will be less than if you live in a poorly insulated building. For the elderly or those with a disability, the amount of time spent at home in the winter may be much more in the colder months than it is in the summer. So to really get a feel for your likely bills and make an informed choice, it’s best to wait for a year’s occupancy to pass before taking the plunge, unless there’s a really pressing reason to switch earlier.

After working out your annual usage, it makes sense to look at switching websites. You should concentrate on those that are endorsed by Ofgem under their ‘confidence code’ as that guarantees minimum standards. It’s also worth looking at Moneysavingexpert.com which has helpful tips and discussion forums about choosing a supplier and switching. They provide plenty of answers to the question, ‘Why switch gas and electric company’? You could use those resources simply for information, or ask one of them to handle the whole switch for you.

If you are doing it yourself, you should contact the prospective new supplier to confirm details of the tariff you are interested in, and ask them for a date they can take over your supply. Then contact your own supplier with the details of the new company and switching date, and the companies between them should take care of the rest. If you are using a switching site, they can take care of those contacts for you.

In either case, you should read the meter on the day of the switch and inform the new supplier of the reading. They pass the information on to your old company who will bill you for your recent usage using your existing tariff, but from then on you should receive bills from your new supplier, based on the tariff you have chosen. There is no other step you need to take for the switch to take place, except that you will get a welcome pack with paperwork describing the new agreement, and normally you will need to sign and return an agreement with your new supplier.

If you change your mind about switching, you will have 14 days after receiving the paperwork to do so. Whether you go through a switching site or do it yourself, it’s not a difficult process. The hardest part is making the decisions about whether to switch and who to switch to, but with the comparisons done for you, even that isn’t hard.