best time to switch

mumbles_one

I can't understand why immediately a utility company announces a big price rise all its customers don't switch to another company. That would reduce the competition a bit if one or two of them where put to the sword. Because in true competition there has to be some losers. By maintaining too many competitive companies we are losing out on any real competition. Its just like supermarkets, you don't benefit by 100s of small supermarkets competing. You benefit by 3 or 4 really big ones competing and the rest pay the price for charging too much. Come on money experts lets get tough . We did it when politicians were caught making unfair charges on their expenses so why not do the same to all companies acting unfairly?

middlepuss

mumbles_one wrote: »

I can't understand why immediately a utility company announces a big price rise all its customers don't switch to another company.

Inertia.

I've just looked into switching and decided not to bother. My company currently isn't quite the cheapest, but in 3 months, who knows?

Of course the folks who run U-switch etc get on TV and say we should all be switching. But they would say that, wouldn't they? That's how they make their money.

I wonder if anyone has looked back over the past 5 years and compared what you would have paid in total with each company and whether the ups and downs in the various companies' prices even out.

Blackpool_Saver

middlepuss wrote: »

Inertia.
I wonder if anyone has looked back over the past 5 years and compared what you would have paid in total with each company and whether the ups and downs in the various companies' prices even out.

is this really the case, I wonder what Martin's views would be....

macman

mumbles_one wrote: »

I can't understand why immediately a utility company announces a big price rise all its customers don't switch to another company. That would reduce the competition a bit if one or two of them where put to the sword. Because in true competition there has to be some losers. By maintaining too many competitive companies we are losing out on any real competition. Its just like supermarkets, you don't benefit by 100s of small supermarkets competing. You benefit by 3 or 4 really big ones competing and the rest pay the price for charging too much. Come on money experts lets get tough . We did it when politicians were caught making unfair charges on their expenses so why not do the same to all companies acting unfairly?

So you would like less competition in a market already dominated by just 6 suppliers?
Does anyone know what % share of the market the big 6 already have?

Pincher

macman wrote: »

So you would like less competition in a market already dominated by just 6 suppliers?
Does anyone know what % share of the market the big 6 already have?

See

http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Markets/RetMkts/ensuppro/Documents1/location%20of%20these%20accounting%20statements%20on%20each%20suppliers%20website.pdf

2009 results (published end June 2010)

Supply Electricity - Domestic
________________________
NPower £1,894m
E.On £2,287m
EDF £1,671m
Centrica £2,826m
Scottish Power £1,529.5m
SSE (2009/10) £2,605m

Supply Gas - Domestic
___________________
NPower 1,541m
E.On £1,520m
EDF £838m
Centrica £6,218m *******
Scottish Power £1,151.1m
SSE (2009/10) £1,890m

So electricity is fairly even, but gas is dominated by British Gas(Centrica).

mumbles_one

What I really want is to send a message to all utility companies so that they would feel very uncomfortable announcing a rise because all their customers would immediately move and they would instantly go bust. A bit like one of the big 4 supermarkets announcing a 10% rise in all their products. The other three would laugh all the way to the bank.

mumbles_one

Blackpool_Saver wrote: »

is this really the case, I wonder what Martin's views would be....

the "money saving experts" have too much to lose to risk running campaigns against big utility companies.

mumbles_one

middlepuss wrote: »

Inertia.

I've just looked into switching and decided not to bother. My company currently isn't quite the cheapest, but in 3 months, who knows?

Of course the folks who run U-switch etc get on TV and say we should all be switching. But they would say that, wouldn't they? That's how they make their money.

I wonder if anyone has looked back over the past 5 years and compared what you would have paid in total with each company and whether the ups and downs in the various companies' prices even out.

I swapped 2 months ago and to add insult to injury the "old" supplier called me and told me they would match the prices offered by the "new". For me that should be and probably is illegal. I told them that would be the last time they would get any business from me.

With supermarkets I can decide day by day which one gets my business. why not the same with utilities???? They don't actually have any work to do to change your supply. It's all admin hype . They don't make the supplies, they just buy in supplies and pass them on. Lets get the supplies from the source rather than intermediary con men.

mumbles_one

Better still lets have a multi vendor meter in the house so you can change your supplier at the touch of a switch. Problem solved

backfoot

The extention of which is that at each change one more company would go bust until last one standing.

Back to square one.:D

mumbles_one

backfoot wrote: »

The extention of which is that at each change one more company would go bust until last one standing.

Back to square one.:D

Look at it this way, at the moment your bill pays for a complete set of company admin for every company. Less companies = bigger possibility to negotiate lower supply prices. You don't need 6 sets of company buildings and vans and engineers and admin to run 1 network. Its the same as the rail sham , the telephone scam and the water flim-flam. All these companies are all really one company split up to look like competition but in fact are monopolies . If you dig deep enough you always find the reasoning behind doing all this "privatisation" was to reduce prices by increasing competition and not increase prices under the umbrella of competition.