Should there be fewer gas and electricity deals?

890 Posts
Poll started 24 Jun 2013
Energy regulator Ofgem plans to cap the number of tariffs suppliers can offer to four per fuel, in a bid to simplify the market.One potential negative is that prices for the cheapest deals could rise, as suppliers won’t be able to offer expensive standard tariffs. These are often £250 a year more than online deals, so they’ll need to make up the difference from somewhere.
Which of the options in this week's poll is closest to your view on how the market should look?
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In an ideal world the energy companies would be nationalised giving better value for money than the current "For Profit" owners.
(note I said in an ideal world! their is not guarantee the government would be better or worse than the current owners! but at least we have the option to Vote out the government every 5 or so years!)
Sol
"Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
But will never happen as the MPs will back down in the face of the arguments that the companies cannot make a profit so there will not be the investment needed etc etc.
Water prices aren't fixed nationwide. Nor should they, or other utilities, be.
I suggest that all you would achieve with your plan is that prices for most people will go even higher - because most people will not be on low/fixed income or unemployed - and it would be those most people who would have to foot the bill.
I am sorry, but that is just socialist claptrap. We used to have nationalised energy companies. They didn't provide better value for money than they do now. Being able to vote every 5 years (and then may be on the losing side) would make no blind bit of difference to energy prices because the nationalised behemoth would cost the same to run regardless of the colour of the government.
I am not saying there is no room for improvement in the current energy industry but nationalisation seems just about the worst alternative I could think of. Luckily, I think we can be quite certain it wouldn't ever happen.
Are you saying prices haven't gone up willy nilly and are not sky high currently?
Even with competition between the suppliers.
If a pensioner receives the winter fuel allowance and is still frightened to put the heating on, something is very very wrong.
At the moment BIG6Energy can rake extra money from their legacy customers on wildly overpriced tariffs and use that money to ensure that when people look at comparison sites, they are in with a reasonable chance of getting a share of those moving. Typically however the smaller operators (genuine operators not white label rebrands like M&S energy which is British Gas) are a bit more expensive than these "best" tariffs. If Big6energy doesn't have as much scope for cross subsidy its likely that these smaller leaner operators will start to come higher up the charts and start to cream off business from the big 6. The only way the big6 can counter this and retain market share is to start to take an axe to their own back office costs. Its not going to make a lot of difference any way up because even under a nationalised system core energy costs are expensive because of global gas and coal prices - GBGovEnergy is not going to sell electricity at less than cost price and as profit makes up a tiny amount of end prices the scope for actual price falls across the market aren't great. The only place where we can see genuine cost cuts rather than just changing the distribution from one group of customers to another is to put pressure on admin etc costs which is where allowing the smaller leaner operators a chance to win business might have some benefits.
It's all very well saying things need to be simpler but that shouldn't mean a limited number of tariffs. Fewer, yes. Limited, no!