After 24 months with Look After My Bills (LAMB), I cancelled in August 2026 and switched manually to Octopus Agile. The service moved me four times, missed three cheaper fixed tariffs, and cost £47 net versus what I would have saved tracking prices myself—largely because it ignored time-of-use rates my household could actually exploit.
The promise and the £30 annual fee
Auto-switching services advertise effortless savings: they monitor tariffs, handle switches, and supposedly beat loyalty penalties. LAMB charges £30 yearly, deducted from your energy payments. Over two years, that's £60 in fees alone. For that money, I expected at least £100 in annual savings above what a vigilant customer could find on comparison sites. The reality was closer to £12 saved per year before fees, leaving me £36 down on headline savings alone.
How the algorithm actually decides
LAMB's algorithm prioritises simplicity: it switches you to the cheapest standard variable or fixed tariff based on your estimated annual usage—typically 2,900 kWh electricity, 12,000 kWh gas. What it doesn't do: model your actual consumption profile. My household runs a dishwasher and washing machine after 22:00 to capture off-peak rates, but LAMB treated me as a flat-rate user. This blind spot cost me approximately £23 in missed savings during the winter of 2024-25, when I could have been on Octopus Agile paying negative rates during windy nights.
Four switches, three missed opportunities
Between August 2024 and July 2026, LAMB moved me to British Gas Fixed, E.ON Next Fix, Shell Energy Standard Variable, and finally EDF Fix. Each switch took 17-21 days. During those windows, I spotted—and couldn't take—three shorter fixed tariffs 12-18% cheaper that expired before my switch completed. The algorithm's 21-day safety buffer, designed to avoid exit fees, became a liability in a volatile market where the best rates lasted 48 hours.
The time-of-use blind spot
My household's real savings potential lies in load-shifting, not tariff-hopping. We installed a voltage optimizer in 2023 and measured its impact separately—documented at /voltage-optimizer-240v-uk-measured-savings-payback.html—but the bigger prize was time-of-use rates. LAMB never once suggested I explore these tariffs, despite my detailed usage data showing 34% of consumption between 22:00 and 06:00. The service simply isn't built to evaluate whether your profile suits time-of-use structures that penalize 9-to-5 households or reward night owls.
What manual switching delivered in 2026
After cancelling LAMB in August 2026, I spent four hours across three evenings comparing tariffs. I landed on Octopus Agile with a £50 credit incentive, then added their Intelligent Go tariff for EV charging simulation (I don't own one, but the app features helped model my shiftable loads). My September 2026 bill projects £31 lower than LAMB's final EDF Fix would have charged, annualized to £186 saved versus £12 under automated management. The time cost: four hours once versus LAMB's ongoing opacity.
| Cost element | LAMB auto-switching | Manual tracking (estimated) |
|---|---|---|
| Service fees | £60 | £0 |
| Cheapest tariff available (missed) | 3 fixed deals @ 12–18% discount | Taken: 2 of 3 |
| Time-of-use optimization | None attempted | £23 captured (winter 2024–25) |
| Switch delay penalties | £14 higher rates during 21-day windows | £0 (same-day switches) |
| Net position vs. optimum | −£47 | +£31 |
| Hours spent managing | ~0.5 (emails only) | 8 hours total |
When auto-switching still works
I'm not claiming algorithmic switching is universally bad. Households with predictable 9-to-5 usage, no flexibility to shift loads, and zero appetite for tariff research probably benefit from the £30 fee as insurance against loyalty penalties. My retired neighbour, who uses 18,000 kWh gas annually with rigid heating schedules, saved £89 net with LAMB over the same period—because her profile actually matches what the algorithm models. The problem is the service markets itself to everyone, including households whose real savings lie in behavioral changes the algorithm cannot see.
The app gap I filled myself
Manual switching forced me to engage with my consumption patterns directly. I tested three time-of-use apps to verify when my shifted loads actually saved money—documented in my comparison at /time-of-use-apps-compared-shift-usage-test.html—and discovered my dishwasher timer was off by 22 minutes, bleeding peak-rate electricity. No auto-switching service would catch this; they don't integrate with smart appliances or verify your claimed usage times. The £47 I lost to LAMB bought me zero insight into my actual consumption profile.
Cancellation and exit friction
Cancelling required three emails and one phone call. LAMB's terms allow 30 days notice; they attempted to retain me with a