Utilites

Hello,

We are about to move into our first London apartment, and there are so many utility companies to choose from that it's making our heads spin... Compared to having no choice back in LA, we're feeling a bit overwhelmed and want to be sure we make the best (cheapest) decision. Does anyone have any tips or suggestions on best utility, cable, and phone company to go with?

Thanks!

Kristina

Yeah, it can be overwhelming.  The Money Saving Expert is a good site for seeing what options you'll have for utilities, and choosing which one will give you the best deal.  That's where we usually start looking, anyway.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/

Yeah, it can be overwhelming.  The Money Saving Expert is a good site for seeing what options you'll have for utilities, and choosing which one will give you the best deal.  That's where we usually start looking, anyway.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/

I agree- best starting place

A lot of times your rental will already have connections set up with certain companies, and to start out with all you have to do is call up and put your name in the bill. Once you do that you can switch to another company should they offer a better deal.

I would recommend to NOT get cable. They will tie you into a contract that is impossible to break should you decide it's crap/too expensive/don't fancy it anymore. Give freeview a try for a while and supplement it with a netflix or lovefilm account. I think at this point all TVs come freeview ready. We had a great TV that had internet connectivity and we could watch movies via netflix. We liked it so much we bought it when we moved back to LA and don't have cable here either.

I would recommend to NOT get cable. They will tie you into a contract that is impossible to break should you decide it's crap/too expensive/don't fancy it anymore. Give freeview a try for a while and supplement it with a netflix or lovefilm account. I think at this point all TVs come freeview ready.

I agree.  We had Sky TV for the first few years we were here, but it got to the point where we weren't really watching that much on it that wasn't also available on Freeview.  We eventually cancelled Sky and now only use Freeview, and haven't missed anything.

That said, if you're the type of person who has a lot of "must watch" TV shows, you may want the channels you get with Sky or Virgin that you don't get with Freeview, but like dels says, try Freeview first.