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MSE News: Energy firms' costs hit five-year low – but don't wait for cuts to bills

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Energy firms' costs hit five-year low – but don't wait for cuts to bills, check if you can save now...
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This story is as old as the energy market itself, yawn......
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but posters on this forum are saying that First Utility has changed its policy on tariff hopping, and they are now charging exit fees for in contract tariff switches.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5387886&highlight=first+utility
Thanks for letting me know. It was good while it lasted.
Suppose one company was to cut its prices by 10%. Millions of people would think of switching. So the other companies would have to respond by cutting their prices by a similar amount.
But then there would be no reason for the customers to switch any more. So all the energy companies would lose 10% of their income without gaining any customers.
They have therefore all decided just to match their competitors' prices to within a tiny margin.
If it breaks, well it wasn't working right anyway.
Not entirely accurate.
Coal is being closed down, yes. But gas plants are still being built and are the biggest producers of UK electricity currently.
Yes, there is a shortage of generating capacity, but that isn't the consumers fault and is a situation that has been seen coming for decades with successive governments doing nothing about it. The industry is a mess.
The biggest risk to our supply at the moment isn't the chance of the price coming down so people use more (this isn't necessarily true anyway) it has to be the growing population (births, immigration) and the need for more housing / infrastructure year on year.
They drop the gas unit rate, and raise the unit rate on electricity.
I switched to the new fixed tariff, on the assumption that I would use lots of gas, but this winter has been too mild.
Amusingly, if I did not upgrade to a condensing boiler, the lower gas unit rate would probably make a noticeable saving.
As it is, I am using more electricity because of the tumble dryer.
Well played, Scottish Power.
In my view, as far as domestic consumers are concerned, Ofgem has had its day and needs to be replaced with a domestic consumer champion (with teeth) that imposes regulation through meaningful licence restrictions/temporary or permanent licence revocation, and fines (no more of this voluntary 'tax deductible' donations to charity rubbish). Perhaps MSE would like to take over this particular baton?