Incentives are often used as a bait-and-switch strategy by retailers. Bill Hero makes them work for you.
Many retailers offer one-time incentives in addition to discounts to market their energy plans. Incentives can take many forms, including:
- fixed cash rebates or cash-back on the first bill,
- variable cash-equivalent incentives such as ‘first month free’ offers,
- non-cash incentives such as movie tickets, sports jerseys and frequent flyer points, or
- conditional incentives, such as a sign-up bonus that applies only if you buy both electricity and gas at the same time.
It’s tricky to include such incentives in a pricing analysis, because they will often only impact the first bill, sometimes reducing that first bill by a significant amount.
Bill Hero includes only cash or cash-equivalent incentives in our pricing calculations.
Non-cash incentives like movie tickets and sports memorabilia and frequent flyer points are always excluded.
To avoid the potential of recommending a poorly priced plan only by virtue of a one-time incentive, we calculate the price impact of cash and cash-equivalent incentives prorated over 1 year.
For example, a $100 incentive on an Electricity plan will manifest as a $25 reduction to a quarterly estimated bill price for that plan.
Tip
By default, your results will load with pricing for all alternative plans inclusive of the pro-rated value of any incentives which may be offered. You can remove incentives from the calculations by switching the Incentives toggle to 'No'.
Note
It's common that the retailers will make incentives available only to new customers. If you see an incentive listed in an alternative plan from your current retailer, you can use the Incentives toggle to remove incentives from the calculation and comparisons.