MSE News: Half of consumers 'don't trust their en...

[MSE Helen]

"Some 50% do not trust gas and electricity suppliers, and 45% trusted them less than two years ago..."

Read the full story:

Half of consumers 'don't trust their energy firm'



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[CRISPIANNE3]

I can only speak from my experience and have found my energy supplier excellent. Have always tried to help and have always been straight forward with me. I left this particular supplier for a brief period and went to Ovo. Never again. For me Scottish Power are the best for customer service.

[Caddyman]

This headline seems a bit of a non story to me. What has trust got to do with it? I'm sorry, everyone who is supplied energy has a 'choice' of the market. It is up to each and every individual to thoroughly read the contract they are entering into before they sign up. I actually don't have any issues at all with my own energy provider, NPower, apart from the fact they can't seem to grasp that I know pretty much how much my annual energy useage will be better than they do! I personally review my energy contract on a yearly basis, have done for the last 10 years. As it happens, after plugging in my energy usage data into comparison websites, NPower has come out as the cheapest energy provider for me and 'er indoors' for dual fuel with the annual £100 discount that they provide, for the last four years.

Researching energy suppliers isn't rocket science (though unscrambling their ridiculously difficult calculation formulae is). I can't personally say that I don't 'trust' my energy supplier, because for me, the notion doesn't exist. They supply a service, I know exactly what I've signed up to and they are the cheapest (about £750 a year for dual fuel all inclusive). They are always pleasant and polite when I call them. My only critisism of their system is, they don't recredit money quick enough to me as a customer when I ask for my own money back. That is something that should be tackled. They should be forced to implement Faster Payment credit back to their customers which means the customer gets their money back within two hours. I has just taken the best part of two weeks to be re-credited with £83 of my own money and then they sent two cheques covering the amount, meaning I had to make the effort to go to my local bank and pay them in and that in turn costs me money in diesel driving there! That in my opinion is more shocking in this day and age.

As for automatically switching their customers to the cheapest tariff in their portfolio when your existing deal comes to an end, well, yes, that would be fantastic, but market savvy customers like me will still always search out the best deals irrespective.

If people really have a genuine complaint about their energy provider other than a so called 'trust' issue, then do the proper thing, complain to the relevant statutory authority. I did so once a few years back with Powergen. I won and received a decent payment from them. It really isn't that difficult.

[Wywth]

Not really a news item at all.

This time I see it's not from the MSE team, but just a re-posting of a PA article

It actually looks like it is another attempt by uSwitch to get their name in the media, presumably via yet another press release they issued (cheapest form of advertising known )

That woman from uSwitch (Ann Robinson - no connection with the one from BBC Watchdog or winks at you on her other programme) really winds me up.
Shes often on the radio and often gets things entirely incorrect, especially when under the slightest pressure in an interview situation.

As a result, I'd like to say I don't have a lot of trust in uSwitch

[Wywth]

Here we go, the original advert press release as distributed by uSwitch

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/u...-suppliers.pdf

[VT82]

In other news:

55% of people trust their energy supplier as much, or more than, they did two years ago.

Nearly two thirds think their energy supplier can't be faulted at helping them to lower their bills.

Three quarters said bills were easy to understand.

88% said that their energy supplier doesn't make communication with them difficult.

Not really a story is it?

Agree on the use of the word 'trust' as well. It's a very emotive word and has no place here.

[Cardew]

Originally Posted by Wywth

That woman from uSwitch (Ann Robinson - no connection with the one from BBC Watchdog or winks at you on her other programme) really winds me up.
Shes often on the radio and often gets things entirely incorrect, especially when under the slightest pressure in an interview situation.

As a result, I'd like to say I don't have a lot of trust in uSwitch

Couldnt agree more, she is just a PR woman. This was posted 4 years ago:

This is she: Ann Robinson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv4Pta6kkD4

and I was correct. She is now Gas Safe Register's Director of Public Awareness

http://www.responsesource.com/releas...hp?relid=LmgXz

That Yukky 'sincere' tone is quite the worst I have heard. She makes her namesake Anne Robinson seem watchable - and she is awful!

[undaunted]

I'm amazed at this "news" - as I thought it would have been far higher than 50%!

[wakeupalarm]

What has trust got to do with energy companies? The MSE staff must really be bored to come up with this news Here's a few more news articles for MSE to report.

50% of customers do not like the colour of their energy suppliers bills
50% of customers do not like the music their energy supplier plays whilst on hold
50% of customers do not like the hairstyle of their energy companies door to door salespeople
50% of customers do not like the logo of their energy company
50% of customers are female
50% of customers are male
50% of customers hold their bill in their left hand
50% of customers hold their bill in their right hand
50% of customers prefer tea
50% of customers prefer coffee

[karvala]

"Some 50% do not trust gas and electricity suppliers, and 45% trusted them less than two years ago..."

Who are the other half?! I have some snake oil here somewhere, guaranteed to cure anything....

[Poq]

Change to Ecotricity then

I trust them:

Ecotricity - green energy company, supplier and generator of electricity
http://www.ecotricity.co.uk
"Switch to ecotricity today and choose green energy, making the biggest difference you can to fighting climate change."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotricity
"Ecotricity is a green energy company based in Stroud, Gloucestershire, England specialising in selling green energy to consumers that it primarily generated from its wind power portfolio. It is built on the principle of heavily reinvesting its profit in building more of its own green energy generation."

Reviews:
http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews136463.html

[Anthorn]

For "trust" read "confidence" or rather "lack of" and I'm surprised it's only 50%. For example when the price of wholesale gas goes down the consumer price doesn't go down and we are treated to excuses such as the need to buy in advance. That is exactly the argument against the energy companies that I personally hear the most. Now we are told that energy prices are due to rise much more but we can bet that the company profits will not be affected: There is such a thing as setting aside some profits to pay for future development which the energy companies appear to be not doing. So when they need to upgrade prices have to rise!

It's not only energy companies though: Banks were responsible for the crisis of 2007/8 and the ensuing credit crunch which affected everyone. We gave them billions so they could inject it into the economy and promote growth and all they did was use it to pay themselves fat bonuses - and they did it twice!

So lack of confidence isn't confined to the energy companies. It isn't rocket science to arrive at the conclusion that we as consumers are being ripped off! Energy, banks, telecommunications, even the price of bread!

[dtaylor84]

Originally Posted by wakeupalarm

What has trust got to do with energy companies? The MSE staff must really be bored to come up with this news

They didn't -- it's a uSwitch press release reported by the Press Associated and regurgitated here. The only thing MSE seems to have done is get the tenses in a muddle: "Some 50% do not trust suppliers and 45% trusted them less than two years ago, comparison website uSwitch.com found".

[hanlou007]

do i really care about Trust ???
More like how cheap are my bills !!!!

[Poq]

Originally Posted by hanlou007

do i really care about Trust ???
More like how cheap are my bills !!!!

What about the environment?