Flick Electric｜Is it the best NZ power company for you?

This page give you the best answers for the following questions;

• What is Electric Flick Electric?
• What kinds of services Flick Electric is offering?
• Should I made a contract with Flick Electric for power/electricity?
• What is advantages and disadvantages of Flick Electric?

This page is the best for you to understand about these types of questions.

I’m going to explain about Flick Electric one by one as below.

1. What is Flick Electric?
2. What is the advantages of Flick Electric?
3. What is the disadvantages of Flick Electric?
4. Which power company is the best for you?【plus comparison table】

If you read this page, you can easily understand what Flick Electric is and whether Flick Electric is the best company for you or not.

1. What is Flick Electric?

source: Flick Electric

Flick Electric is one of the popular smaller power companies, and Flick Electric is one of the winners of “Consumer NZ’s People’s Choice award” in 2020.

Flick Electric buys electricity in the wholesale electricity market and supplies it to their customers.

So, Flick Electric is a retailer and does not have their own electric facilities.

Head Office	Wellington
Operate from	2018
Main Shareholders	100%: Flick Energy Ltd (Ultimate holding company: Z Energy Ltd)
Services	Electricity only.
Service area	Some of the North Island Some of the South Island
Customer (electricity)	around 25,000 customers
Market share (electricity)	2% of the NZ’s electric market
Number of employee	around 50 employees

Top5 power companies (“Big5”) in New Zealand

Company name	Customer (ICP count*)	Market share (ICP share)
Genesis Energy	490,000	22%
Contact Energy	420,000	19%
Meridian Energy	340,000	15%
Mercury NZ	330,000	15%
Trustpower	270,000	12%

(*) ICP (Installation Control Point) : Each property has a unique ICP number identifying it on the New Zealand electricity network.
(*) ICP count : the total number of ICP

(source: Electricity Authority, as of March 2021)

2. What is the advantages of Flick Electric?

Based on my research, the 3 advantages of Flick Electric are as below.

1. Cheaper “off-peak” electric price everyday
2. All plans are No fixed-term contact or No break fee
3. Best customer satisfaction among major power companies

Details of the advantage are as below.

2-1. Cheaper “off-peak” electric price everyday

source: Flick Electric

The off-peak time are the following time.

• [Weekday] 1am-5pm, 9pm-7am
• [Weekend] All weekend from 12am Saturday – 11.59pm Sunday

And, the off-peak price are “up to 24% – 60%” cheaper than the normal price. (It depend on the network you are in.).

So, if you use your appliances (a washing machine, dishwasher, dryer and etc) during off-peak time, you can get a lot of savings.

Q. What is the electric plan of Flick Electric ?

Flick Electric offer the following 3 plans for home.

Plan name	Details
Flat	A flat-rate plan (Always same electric price)
Off-peak	Cheaper prices during off peak hours
Wholesale	Pay the real time, wholesale price of electricity

(*) Payment methods: [ Direct debit from your bank account ] or [ Credit card ]

2-2. All plans are No fixed-term contact or No break fee

source: Flick Electric

All the plan of Flick Electric are no fixed-term contracts or no break fee (no exit fee).

So you can change your plan to another company anytime with no payment, if you like.

Q. What is a break fee (an exit fee) ?

Many companies offer the cheaper electric price, if you make a contract of 1 or 2 year fixed-term.

If you stop or switch to another company during the fixed-term period, you have to pay a break fee (an exit fee) roughly $150 – $200.

2-3. Best customer satisfaction among major power companies

You need to know that Flick Electric has the best customer satisfaction based on the survey “Customer Satisfaction with power companies” conducted by Consumer NZ in 2020.

(*) Consumer NZ is an independent, non-profit organisation to offer New Zealanders a fairer deal and established in 1959.

source: Consumer NZ

So I believe that you can enjoy Flick Electric’s services with no problem.

(*) On the other hand, based on the survey, 2 of the “Big5” (Contact Energy and Trustpower) are lower than the average(“52%”) of the electric industry.

3. What is the disadvantages of Flick Electric?

Based on my research, the 2 disadvantages of Flick Electric are as below.

1. No Gas and Broadband service.
2. Direct debit from your bank account or Credit card, only.

The details of the disadvantages are as below.

3-1. No Gas and Broadband service

If you want to make a contract for Gas and/or Broadband together (as a set plan / as a bundle plan, Flick Electric does not suit for you, because of no gas and broadband service.

The following companies offer Gas and Broadband too, so please check their official websites, if you like.

Power company name	Gas	Broadband
Nova Energy	✓	✓
Contact Energy	✓	✓
Trustpower	✓	✓
Genesis Energy	✓	–

(*) I recommend “Nova Energy” among the above 4 companies, because Nova Energy has better customer satisfaction as explained later.

3-2. Direct debit from your bank account or Credit card, only.

You can pay only direct debit from you bank account or or credit card, because Flick Electric wants to minimise their operation costs as much as possible.

Basically other major power companies are ok for Internet banking manually (weekly, fortnightly and monthly), but you can not pay using it for Flick Electric.

If you want to pay using internet banking manually, I recommend you choose “Nova Energy“, because Nova Energy is one of the best customer power companies too.

4. Which power company is the best for you?【plus comparison table】

I believe that Flick Electric is the best power company, if you need electricity only.

But Flick Electric has no plan for Gas and Broadband, so if you need Gas and Broadband too, it’s good for you to choose “Nova Energy” because of one of the best customer satisfaction.

4-1. “Nova Energy”・・・you can get Gas and Broadband too

source: Nova Energy

Nova Energy is a smaller power company, and it is the No.1 company in customer satisfaction based on the survey made by Consumer NZ.

If you choose Nova Energy, I believe that you can enjoy their services with no problem!!

You cant choose a set plan of electric and Gas/Broadband, but you can not choose an electric only plan. (all plans are in the following table.)

【All plans provided by Nova Energy】

(*) The following table can be scrolled to the right.

【Nove Energy: Company information】

Head Office	Wellington
Operate from	2012
Main Shareholders	100%: Todd Petroleum Mining Corporation Ltd
Service are	Electricity Gas Broadband Phone (Landline Only)
Customer (electricity)	–
Market share (electricity)	roughly 4% share in the NZ’s electric market
Number of employee	–
Payment Method	Weekly, Fortnightly Direct debit, Credit/Debit card, Automatic payment, internet banking, NZ Post shop etc.

4-2. If you want to check other power companies ?

Powerswitch is the best way for you to find the cheapest electric plan.

source: Powerswitch

Powerswitch is the best website in New Zealand to find which power company and pricing plan is the cheapest for you.

What you have to do is just to input some information (your address, number of your family, type of heating products/systems you use and etc), then you can get to know the cheapest plan.

For example, the result will come up as a list such as the following image.

source: Powerswitch

So, it’s very easy to understand that which company and plan you should choose.

(*) If you want to know more details about Powerswith, please check another page “What is POWERSWITCH? The best way to find the cheapest electricity plan“.

4-3. Comparison table of the most popular 10 power companies in NZ

It’s good for you to get to know the difference between Flick Electric and other popular electric providers.

(*) You can scroll the following chart left to right.

source: Electricity Authority (as of March 2021)

6. Summary

Until here, I explained about Flick Electric’s advantages and disadvantages, the difference between Flick Electric and other main power companies in NZ – is it useful for you?

As a summary, I write down about the main points of this page as below.

• Flick Electric’s plan is Electric only.
• Flick Electric has best customer satisfaction, and one of the winners of “Consumer NZ’s People’s Choice award”
• You can pay using Direct debt from your bank account or Credit card only.

Smaller and newer power companies have better customer satisfaction.

So, I recommend the following power companies and website, so please check it !!

• “Nova Energy“・・・This is the best, if you need Gas and/or Broadband, too.
• “Powerswitch“・・・You can get to know the cheapest electric plan in the area you live in.

Many thanks to read this page.

Please let your family and friends about this page, if you like.