Consumer Experiences Of Time of Use Tariffs

Ipsos conducted research on behalf of Consumer Focus across Great Britain to help understand more about the kinds of people who use Time of Use (ToU) tariffs (such as Economy 7): who they are most suitable for, the interactions with their heating systems, what problems or issues they encounter, how many of them feel they are on the “wrong” tariff for their needs and whether their experience could be improved by more or better information and advice. Fieldwork was carried out on three waves of Capibus (the Ipsos omnibus) which consisted of three GB-representative samples of approximately 2,000 interviews each between 9 February and 1 March 2012. 5,914 interviews were completed in total. Of these 4,761 were conducted with mains electricity customers who are at least jointly responsible for their household bills and 620 customers were identified as using Time of Use tariffs. Further face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with 15 of these Time of Use customers between 8 and 14 March. Data are weighted to GB population parameters.