Why do energy companies need our current supplier?

Sledgehead

Try and get a quote and they always want to know who you are currently with "to provide a comparison".

Excuse me, but I didn't spend years in education to need a telesales bod to work out a bit of simple maths on my own bill.

It strikes me that the real problem with energy comparison is our docile willingness to let them work out the figures. If instead the tarriffs were the first thing (rather than the last) we saw on their websites, perhaps we'd all take more responsibility and see how simple understanding our bills is.

Instead we have to tell them our name, tel no, our email address, our house number, our usage, our current provider, before we get anywhere near a quote. Is it any wonder in the past companies have just used this info to switch us on the vaguest enquiry?

As for the current supplier info, it's usually used as an excuse to quote us a "saving" for switching based on our current supplier's standard (read most expensive) tarriff (as any fix we may be on is usually approaching it end at the point we start looking around). A wholly deceptive practice as few of us bothering to compare prices would ever consider a standard variable tarriff.

If MSE really wanted to help customers it would push for a move to make upfront tarriff display mandatory, requiring nothing more from the enquirer than their postcode.

Bluebirdman_of_Alcathays

I quite agree - you should be able to input your consumption statistics and postcode to access a list of annual prices.

Sadly, until some altruistic soul designs, sets up, and maintains such a site, with all the associated costs paid for by said soul, we are stuck with the current model. In the current model, people need to be paid, and that's either from the gaining supplier themselves, or from selling your data on.

molerat

Does anyone actually go direct to a supplier and ask for a quote ?

I use EnergyHelpline. All they ask is postcode, annual kWh use and your current supplier and tariff so that they can give you a +/- compared to what you are currently paying, also being able to opt out of the stupid "at the end of your current tariff" factor. They also give a clear £ now and £ new tariff plus unit and SC charges at a click plus the ability to have multiple of these boxes on screen at once. I hate USwitch and CEC as they have horrible confusing UIs.

But I do agree that energy suppliers should be forced to have straightforward tariff information on their front page with a simple post code input, maybe a cost for kWh per year input as well.