Customer Loyalty - a thing of the past.

freccles

Hasn't the legislation changed recently and new customer incentives abolished? Or was that just for car insurance?

bristolleedsfan

freccles said:

Hasn't the legislation changed recently and new customer incentives abolished? Or was that just for car insurance?

Does not apply to energy. however lack of deals, reduction in competition has had effect of most cashback offers from energy providers being at best heavily reduced, at worst removed

JJ_Egan

Customer Loyalty changed yes ever since Martins first  article and multiple others followed MSE .

EssexHebridean

Cardew said:

Gerry1 said:

U Switch don't subsidise any tariffs.  Your supplier is simply hiding the best deals from their existing customers.

Not only hiding the cheapest tariffs, but in some cases only making those tariffs avaiable to new customers. A case in point is British Gas who will not allow their cheapest tariff to be obtained by existing customers.

And this is why customer loyalty is a thing of the past... Bacman said:

Some providers for other utilities do not rip off customers; the company I use for car insurance gives existing customers the same rate as for new customers, if not then generate a quote and give them the reference number of it and they will update to that price. Most utility and insurance companies, yes, not so creditable so you need to get the best deal all the time (which I have been doing for the last years). Home insurance company I use put the price up a bit for renewal, I phoned them, argued the toss and they actually gave me a better price than even for new customers!

But this is exactly the point - you're getting the result in the end but YOU have to put the legwork in to get the fair deal. I now work on the basis that if I have to do quotes and then make a phone call anyway, that phone call is always going to be "I've found cheaper, I'm off". The inevitable "Oh we might be able to improve on that" is usually greeted with a rather more polite version of "well you should have done that in the first place then - I'm still off!"