British Gas loses 224,000 domestic customers in first 3 months of 2016

footyguy

Centrica, the owner of British Gas, lost 224,000 residential customers in the first three months of the year as households switched to other providers.


The loss accounted for 1.5% of domestic customers, pushing down the number of residential accounts to 14.4 million.


The UK energy industry has a total of 39 suppliers. The major six suppliers - British Gas, SSE, Npower, Scottish Power, EDF and E.On - still account for 85% of all domestic energy accounts.


Read the full report here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36070924

ColinFishwick

I will never use any of the big 6 now. I would have to be paid to ever use Scottish power

[Deleted User]

Its time now for BG to start getting competitive and get lowering their tariffs especially standard/variable for prepayment meters. I m paying only 8pkwhr for my electric with a BG collective compared to the 13p/kwh for prepays. I m sure we will see some big price drops pretty soon from BG. The UKs biggest supplier can easily afford a drop of 224k customers.I m surprised its not one million with their current rates.

Bluebirdman_of_Alcathays

sacsquacco wrote: »

Its time now for BG to start getting competitive and get lowering their tariffs especially standard/variable for prepayment meters. I m paying only 8pkwhr for my electric with a BG collective compared to the 13p/kwh for prepays. I m sure we will see some big price drops pretty soon from BG. The UKs biggest supplier can easily afford a drop of 224k customers.I m surprised its not one million with their current rates.

I can't agree with this. BG have probably the most inelastic demand of all the suppliers - ie. they know that a very significant percentage of their customers will never leave BG.
They may as well keep charging through the nose where possible. If they slashed prices, they would probably make a whacking great loss - they would still have huge fixed costs to service that reduced revenue wouldn't cover.

[Deleted User]

Bluebirdman_of_Alcathays wrote: »

I can't agree with this. BG have probably the most inelastic demand of all the suppliers - ie. they know that a very significant percentage of their customers will never leave BG.
They may as well keep charging through the nose where possible. If they slashed prices, they would probably make a whacking great loss - they would still have huge fixed costs to service that reduced revenue wouldn't cover.

Yes I agree, the old timers stick rigidly to BG..Must be the word "British " in their moniker.They still refer to them as the "gas board ".BG did offer some of the cheapest tariffs in the UK (Sainsburys Energy ) until OFGEM stuck their oar in about white label tariffs and made them comply with the parent tariff rates. BG can still compete with the cheapest and I am currently with BG getting the cheapest kwr electric rate in the UK ( 8p/kwh ).Their running costs per customer should be cheaper than most because they ve stormed ahead and fitted over a million smart meters.Unlike the cheapo rubbish suppliers like First Utility and Spark, etc they do at least comply with OFGEMs rules on proper metering services and inspections, and their billing systems actually work properly unlke Npower/Scot Power.

Rubidium

sacsquacco wrote: »

Yes I agree, the old timers stick rigidly to BG..Must be the word "British " in their moniker.They still refer to them as the "gas board ".BG did offer some of the cheapest tariffs in the UK (Sainsburys Energy ) until OFGEM stuck their oar in about white label tariffs and made them comply with the parent tariff rates. BG can still compete with the cheapest and I am currently with BG getting the cheapest kwr electric rate in the UK ( 8p/kwh ).Their running costs per customer should be cheaper than most because they ve stormed ahead and fitted over a million smart meters.Unlike the cheapo rubbish suppliers like First Utility and Spark, etc the do at least comply with OFGEMs rules on proper metering services and inspections, and their billing systems actually work properly unlke Npower/Scot Power.

Over a million 'smart meters' that will require replacing due to being out of date and are actually rather dumb meters!

Bark01

Their running costs are cheaper due to the simple principle of economies of scale. They are pretty much twice as large as the next biggest supplier and 4 times as large most of the other major suppliers.

If they chose to compete they could run all the other suppliers into the ground but then they’d be accused of running a monopoly.

[Deleted User]

Rubidium wrote: »

Over a million 'smart meters' that will require replacing due to being out of date and are actually rather dumb meters!

Mines still a pretty clever smart meter in my house. Its doing the job faultlessly and has been for years. I get billed spot on and never look at the meter . OK I ve got to spend 20 mins having a chat with a meter fitter one day when he comes round to update to SMET2 but its no big deal.

Rubidium

sacsquacco wrote: »

OK I ve got to spend 20 mins having a chat with a meter fitter one day when he comes round to update to SMET2 but its no big deal.

The DCC will be responsible for the SMETS 2 meters, not the SMETS 1 meters that have already been installed by suppliers in the foundation stage of the rollout, so you actually mean remove and replace with a new meter - what a waste!

Dird

I'm pretty surprised by this :-o I was almost tempted to leave OVO because their MSE offer being so much lower than anyone else
Presumably most the people who left were on variable

[Deleted User]

I believe the MSE collective deal was for 130,000 accounts but of course, some of these would have been existing BG customers so we don't know the true effect on numbers brought about by the collective deal.