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 electricity and gas simultaneously.
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.
What kinds of incentives does Bill Hero recognise?
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.
How does Bill Hero calculate plans with incentives?
To avoid the potential of an otherwise poorly-priced plan landing at the top of your results only by virtue of a one-time incentive, we calculate the price impact of cash and cash-equivalent incentives pro-rated 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.
Many retailers use one-time incentives to attract new customers to their plans.
Lower rates vs Incentives?
Incentives represent genuine cash value to energy consumers, so we think it makes sense to include incentives by default in the comparison calculations.
The cash value of an incentive is usually paid up-front, so you get the benefit right away, instead of having to wait for the benefit to accrue over time if the same value was instead delivered as a reduction to consumption rates.
Tip
You can remove incentives from the calculations by switching the Incentives toggle to 'No'.
Incentives as sign-up bonus
Many retailers use sign-up bonus incentives as a tactical mechanism to ramp up their customer acquisition — the incentive will generally be available only for new customers, not existing ones.
Bill Hero accommodates this by defaulting to calculating available incentives into all plans except for the plans offered by your current retailer.
So, if your current retailer happens to offer a sign-up incentive to attract new customers, you won't be eligible for it, because you're an existing customer. Bill Hero will recognise that you're a current customer of that retailer, and will not include the incentive in that retailer's plans when it generates your results.