Gas - Fix your prices until 2011

backfoot

1carminestocky wrote: »

My 'prediction' (OK, guess!) is that is yet more price conditioning by the energy companies! A bit like their 'predicted 70% rise' rubbish of a few months ago. Get people worried about a 70% rise, then bring in a 35% rise and the more gullible of the the GB population actually believe they have got off lightly! To be fair, the GB population (if I may generalise for a bit) have got the energy companies they probably deserve...

I am with you on this until the final bit. I don't think we have had a choice,in fact the speed of consolidation has made competiton totally ineffective. The lack of strong effective regulation has reaped this mess not Joe Public.

SwanJon

The 70% (thikn it was high sixties actually) was over 2 years, so 35% in the first year makes the maths easy!

I've no idea if this is 'price conditioning', but there was a wide range of numbers bandied about from a variery of sources - just picking one (ok, the big headline) to fit your argument makes it nice and easy doesn't it? I see you've now joined us in a world where 37% of people can't sign up to the cheapest online tariffs. I'd imagine that of those 37%, fixing will make sense to a bigger proportion than of the other 63% (think that sentance works). As many people have said everyone is in a different situation, and will need a different answer.

1carminestocky

SwanJon wrote: »

The 70% (thikn it was high sixties actually) was over 2 years, so 35% in the first year makes the maths easy!

I've no idea if this is 'price conditioning', but there was a wide range of numbers bandied about from a variery of sources - just picking one (ok, the big headline) to fit your argument makes it nice and easy doesn't it? I see you've now joined us in a world where 37% of people can't sign up to the cheapest online tariffs. I'd imagine that of those 37%, fixing will make sense to a bigger proportion than of the other 63% (think that sentance works). As many people have said everyone is in a different situation, and will need a different answer.

So why aren't we seeing headlines like 'Gas prices could decrease by as much as 30%'? The report I read in The Telegraph had an energy companies source quoted as stating: "This would raise annual gas bills for a typical domestic customer from around £600 to over £1,000 per annum – if oil prices rise to above this level then this would lead to further increases in gas bills." This was when oil was over $140 a barrel, it's now almost 30% off that high now. Surely it works both ways? But, of course, it's just not in the energy company's interests to predict a future reduction in gas prices on account of them all enthusiastically pushing their various fixed products (based on the current after-increases prices) and effectively tieing customers in by imposing penalties if they wish to switch during the period of the fix...