Npower price hike: Martin Lewis explains how to BEAT the cost and pay LESS for your energy

The Npower rise is on their standard tariff prices, with a 15 per cent increase for electricity and a three per cent increase on gas.

Appearing on This Morning, Martin said: “Energy companies didn’t rise prices last year. This was because they tried to stop people switching in the winter, when customers are the most likely to move, by freezing prices.

“Instead, they are raising prices starting from now until April.”

Comparing the prices before and after the hike, Martin said: “The standard bill would have been £887 and is now £1,187, which is £300 higher.

“The cheapest tariff on the market is £840, which is a shocking difference.

“But despite the savings to be made, two thirds of people in this country don’t switch.

“I say it all the time – use a switching service, or at the very least, make sure you are on the cheapest tariff with your energy company.

“If you can’t use the internet, you can call price comparison sites to do it over the phone.”

Martin advised: “Move to a fixed tariff, and you can jump in a year to avoid any price hikes.

“Do it within 49 days of your fixed deal ending as then there are no penalties.”

Martin also revealed every trick to get cheap train tickets during his segment on This Morning.

Last week, a group of train companies said they would trial major changes in the way tickets are sold to make it simpler to find the cheapest price.

The trial, taking place in May, will be on routes like London to Scotland and London to Sheffield and will include for the first time simpler tickets so you don’t pay more for travelling ‘any permitted route’.

There will also be an ‘airline-style’ mix-and-match ticketing, so that if you change trains and see that the price of two journeys is cheaper than one, it’ll show you that.

But Martin revealed these changes still won’t guarantee that when you book a ticket you’ll get the cheapest price. So how can you save? The first and most well-known is by ‘split-ticketing’.

Martin explained: “Split-ticketing is where instead of buying one ticket for the journey, you buy multiple tickets for different parts of the same journey, which perversely, illogically and ridiculously often works out cheaper.”