You Switch If You Want To…
…the country’s not for switching!
So the Guardian reports that we as a nation are paying £1.7bn too much for our energy supplies. Other’s have estimated this even higher – £2.5bn seems a common figure. Apparently 70% of us “are happy” with our present energy supplier/tariff. But this figure is actually the percentage of people who don’t switch, it has nothing to do with contentment. As ever, statistics are being manipulated to hide the facts.
Fact: if you put your details on to a price comparison website your personal data may well be circulated to numerous energy supply companies who will then bombard you with calls day and night touting for your custom. Many of us would prefer not to experience this. What we do want is to be able to see clear, straightforward (just quote the price per kilowatt hour for example) for a number of tariffs, with whatever other conditions pertain, and make some sort of informed decision based on OUR research. Not an opaque mess of “non information” designed to mask the true rates.
Now look at what the CMA are proposing by way of improvements to this system.
At present the comparison websites are legally required to show all available tariffs, and not just those which benefit the comparison website. The point here being that the energy suppliers pay commission to the websites and that’s hidden from us and, we’re told by those in the know, varies considerably from deal to deal, supplier to supplier etc. The argument goes that the larger suppliers will offer higher commission to the websites than the smaller suppliers, and yet it’s those same smaller suppliers who almost always offer the best deals – efficiency and responsiveness being their forté.
Just two years ago, OFGEM investigated claims that price comparison sites weren’t offering a level playing field and many clamoured that “something must be done”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31661858
Of course little, if anything, has changed. But under these proposed new CMA guidelines the larger energy suppliers will be able to encourage (bribe might be a better word?) the comparison websites to only show their tariffs, making it likely that our national overpayment will increase rather than decrease.
Ever since the utility companies were privatised, prices have gone up – way higher than inflation and or the wholesale costs of the energy being sold on. Why? Because now these businesses have to show a decent return to their shareholders. And we, the consumers, are being ripped off.
Many of these energy suppliers are multinationals. If they are ripping off their customers in several other countries on a similar scale then they are trousering huge sums of money. Where does it go? Is investment in infrastructure any better than before privatisation? No, apparently it’s worse. Are there social funds being used to help those less able to pay? Yes, but nothing on this scale.
The Stickler suggests it’s time to stop this nonsense and require energy suppliers to offer every customer the best tariff, and not wait for them to unearth it on some obscure website, while making it fairly unlikely that many will even attempt to shop around because the whole process is opaque, and results in what are little more than “nuisance calls”, which most of us take trouble to try and avoid. And also, stop the CMA proposals in their tracks, because if the present arrangements are a mess that is already costing us, the consumers, some £2bn more than it should, it’s going to get a lot worse when the rules regarding the price comparison websites are relaxed to allow them to exclude any tariffs that they do not choose to display.
What next – comparethecomparison.com? That will get to be such a mess we’ll then need comperethecomparethecomparison.com to provide guidance!!! OMG.
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