Tories, banks, and utilities a thought

Thrugelmir

grey_gym_sock wrote: »

the "suppliers" don't really supply customers, they just supply energy to the grid, and provide billing and meter-reading services to customers. get rid of them. have 1 national tariff. purchasing energy for the grid, and billing and meter-reading, could either be centralized or contracted out. job done.

LNG has to be traded, imported and stored. So there's more to the gas business than supply alone.

pqrdef

Rollinghome wrote: »

I'd agree that there is a serious problem with the use of "confusion marketing" that's rife in all consumer facing businesses. Just go into Tescos to buy a few apples or packet of soap powder to see it at work.

It particularly hits the more vulnerable and is probably indicative of the general loss of morality by our greedy business leaders.

Amen to that. You can go round a supermarket or visit a bank website and feel the cynicism as your buttons get pressed.

All we seem to have achieved through democracy is that we now go and vote to approve of the world being run by the same sort of !!!!!! who always did.

And we all think we'll never fall for it. But we'll all get old. Today's old people weren't always quaint and stupid - they really were smarter and sharper when they were younger.

Rollinghome wrote: »

Similarly with savings rates. Someone is sure to point out that it's only because someone else is being paid 0.05% on their instant access account that I'm able to get 4%. They'll rightly tell me that I'm being subsidised by the less astute.

Market segmentation isn't always bad. For instance, the old Senior Citizens Railcard was profitable because it made low prices available to a price-elastic market sector (though not poor - it sold to the middle market, not those in poverty).

The same deal for commuters or business travellers would obviously have been a huge loss-maker.

So yes, it's often the case that a good deal can only be available at all because it's not available to everybody, or because take-up will be limited.

But it's not necessarily fair to talk about cross-subsidy. More bums on seats spreads out the overheads and should benefit everybody.

Doesn't work quite the same for banks and power companies because the total market isn't that elastic. But limited offers can still be good.

What irks is the complexity and lack of transparency. There's a complex game going on where one hand is devising cheap tariffs to attract price-sensitive customers, while the other hand is trying to make sure they don't discover the cheapest price, but pay over the odds.

It's like buying double glazing. The guy may have a competition-beating price up his sleeve, but he really wants to keep it there.

pqrdef

jimjames wrote: »

If you haven't ever switched why not? I'm genuinely curious for the reasons especially for anyone who is on this site!

I switched once, to a small friendly internet-only company. But my existing providers (inherited from the old monopoly system, so not my fault) were as uncooperative as possible. Things did not go smoothly.

Then my nice new provider just got eaten up by one of the big bad giants, which hiked up the prices and I was back to square one.

Switched again, a bit easier this time, but still not hassle-free. Stayed put since then, though I have changed tariffs with the same company.

Tried a comparison site, to see what I was missing. They pretended to be an information site, but of course they were far more intent on selling than providing information.

They didn't recognise my existing tariff - power companies are very cagey with information about current pricing on tariffs no longer on sale. So they were in no position to tell me what I would save. I needed raw data so that I could calculate that for myself. But they weren't going to give me any raw data, they were only going to give me a number in a huge font saying what I "could" save.

This seemed to be a meaningless number, basically £300 + a random variation. We're supposed to think they mean, you "could" switch, and if you do, this is what you can expect to save. What they really mean is, you "could" switch, and if you do, you "could" save, or maybe not, and the saving "could" be this much, for all we know, or any other number.

But basically they were just determined that I would click on one of their big "Switch Now" referral ljnks. If I go away and switch, they get nothing. If I click on a button, they get paid 2% of the time even if the other 98% of clicks lead to a dead-end and no sale. On the net, scattergun selling works, because one hit pays for a zillion misses.

So if I was already on the best price I could get, which was quite possible, that was the last thing they were going to tell me. Whatever I said I was looking for, they always has that £300+ saving. Mostly they tried to sell me new-customer offers from my existing provider, which they knew I wasn't eligible for, but worth a try, you never know, might slip through the net, the company's computer is buggy as well.

So I tried again with fake identities and fake data, and the results I got were strangely inconsistent. You'd think, if I was currently paying £100 more (than my alter ego) for the same usage, the potential saving from any switch would be £100 bigger, but it didn't seem to work that way at all.

I decided it was a total crock.

grey_gym_sock

Thrugelmir wrote: »

LNG has to be traded, imported and stored. So there's more to the gas business than supply alone.

yes, upstream of the grid is more complex, and my main point isn't about changing it.

it's about breaking the artificial link between upstream of the grid and downstream (i.e. supplying customers). and simplifying downstream, by having a single tariff, and a single billing company.

pqrdef

Imnoexpert wrote: »

Can we look forward to them applying the same logic to the bankers? Imagine a world where you didn't have to check regularly if the variable rate on your account had suddenly dropped from 3% to 0.1%, or keep tabs on the 'bonus' period which you might have forgotten about, or watch out that your Cash Isa had been superseded by an ISA Plus, then an ISA Plus Extra, then an Extra Plus Bonus ISA.

I very much doubt if the Cameron plan, whatever it is, will stop anybody doing introductory offers and switching incentives.

Yorkshire BS are bragging that they don't do introductory offers and haven't dropped a savings rate in years. That might have to change soon.

Nationwide made a scathing TV ad about introductory niceness, and then succumbed, but now they're touting their Savings Watch gimmick, which nags you when it's time to switch. But that's Nationwide. Confused R Us.

But juicy introductory rates are very much based on how much money the banks figure will be left in the keepnet. Average rates paid on savings are well under 1%, and there's no way the banks can afford to pay 2.5% on all that money.

I get the impression that the introductory game is starting to fail, and they may be drifting back to Plan A. This is where they take the account off sale and replace it with a new similar account, then the rate on the old account slowly fades away. They'll try to arrange it so they don't have to write and tell you.

Any bets on what Nationwide's Loyalty Saver will be paying after Christmas?