5 Top Tips for Picking Your Energy Company

Learn How to Take the Best Possible Advantage of Your Electricity Choice

We’ve already explained the best method for shopping for electricity in Texas. Also, we’ve delivered critical advice to help you understand which Texas electricity plan is right for you. Now, it’s time to discuss the third pillar in becoming a truly educated Texas energy consumer: picking your energy company.

This might be the most important factor of all, as the Texas Retail Electricity Provider (REP) you choose sends out your bill, takes your payments, and serves as the first line of information for most of your questions about your electricity service. In short, no matter how excellent the plan might be, if the energy company offering that plan is sub-par, you’ll probably have a terrible experience.

So, before you click that Sign Up button and switch to a new plan, you should examine our 5 top tips for picking your Texas energy company.

1) Know What You Want

You must begin your exploration with this step. If you don’t understand what matters in terms of the REP selling electricity for your home, you could get fooled by shady promotions and underperforming services. We recommend you consider issues like:

• Quality of customer service – Easily the #1 consideration for most people
• Quantity of customer service – Phone, e-mail, text, online, social media, etc. (complete with hours of availability)
• Billing methods – Print, e-mail, online, etc.
• Payment methods – Mail, smartphone, online, auto-pay, etc.
• Self-service features – Online account manager, FAQs, blog, etc.

While not every customer needs every bell and/or whistle, you need to know what matters to you and your life. Once you understand this, you can begin whittling away the companies who don’t meet those requirements.

2) Know What They Offer

After you address tip #1, it’s time to sift through your options. Depending upon where and how they excel, the REPs vying for your business will tell you exactly what they provide to customers. Since they want to be known for the situations in which they excel, it’s your job to seek out the places where they miss the mark.

Not every company has everything you want, so you need to determine if a company has enough of what you really need. If this sounds like making a “pros-and-cons” list, that’s exactly what you’re doing. If it seems silly to you to make such a list, think about how much money, time, and effort you could save if you selected an energy company you like.

3) Review the Company’s Website

Using tips #1 & #2, you should whittle down your list of potential energy companies to a small handful. This is now the time to do a deep dive into the website for each REP you like. We recommend that you go beyond merely what each company offers and investigate how and why they talk about themselves.

Specifically, you should explore how the company shares information on its website. If you have to dig around for details about how the company conducts business, that’s a red flag you should avoid now – instead of when you’re a customer. This includes items like:

• Contact information
• Policies and procedures
• Terms of the current promotion(s)
• Rewards fulfilment
• Testimonials
• Awards

Simply put, you probably won’t visit your REP’s website on a regular basis. But when you really need them, you should go with a company that puts the most important customer information front-and-center.

4) Read the Reviews

At this point, you should have only a couple companies vying for your business, which means it’s time to visit review sites. Please note: some top sites get kickbacks from leading REPs for pushing certain plans onto customers, Also, other review sites are simply annoying to navigate or have a reputation of attracting only certain kinds of reviewers.

But even taking that information with several grains of salt, reviews from actual customers can’t be fudged. We recommend seeking out reviews that mention these key elements:

• Customer service quality
• Rewards fulfilment
• Promotion details
• Plan terms
• Billing and payment situations

Actual customers will give you the best insight into how energy companies operate. Just be sure you recognize that a customer is more likely to leave a negative review about one bad experience than a positive review about a long history of good experiences. Pay attention to nuance and context, while using your better judgment.

5) Trust Your Instincts in Picking your Energy Company

You’re a smart person. Even if you’ve never purchased an electricity plan before in a deregulated state like Texas, you probably have a pretty good idea of what you want from any company that provides direct goods and services. You know what good (and bad!) customer service sounds like, whether described by the company itself or its customers. You know what a good (and bad!) promotion sounds like, because, as the old adage goes, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

This is Texas – you really do have all the power when it comes to electricity choice. Hence, picking the right energy company for you comes down to assembling all the pertinent details and making the most informed decision possible. Even better, if you think you made the wrong decision, you have can switch away to a different and better energy company.

At Power Wizard, our mission is to help Texas electricity customers make the best possible choice for their lives. We do this by doing all of the searching and choosing on your behalf! Not only does our artificial intelligence technology service search dozens of REPs and electricity plans, but it will actively recommend the plan that’s right for you so you can maximize your electricity savings.

To learn more about our subscription service, check out the Power Wizard Guarantee or simply see how it works!