business-utilities News
Confusing Gas and Electric tariffs
Whilst having conversations with both residents and businesses about squashing their energy bills, conversation always turns to how expensive both home and business energy is – we often find that people know that there are cheaper utility providers available but somehow they feel that it is difficult to find who is generally offering the best energy option.
It would seem their view is that often the Big 6 energy suppliers and even smaller energy companies continually offer confusing gas and electric tariffs.
Back in October 2011 we reported that Ofgem were being told going to get a grip and address energy price increases and start tackling head on the often complicated tariffs which are being offered to householders and businesses who are looking to save money on their utility energy bills.
So Ofgems plans for simpler understandable utility bills has found a lot of favour with consumers who when tested found it easy to identify the cheapest utility provider when offered a single unit price for a household.
Ofgem contacted 2,000 people in a survey and the results of their research found that 70 percent of those surveyed said they would switch their utility energy provider if their gas and electricity bills were made easier to understand.
The results of the survey also found that confusing tariffs make householders who want to look to switch their utility provider unsure about who is offering the best saving on their gas and electricity bills and as a result stay on what would be considered to be an expensive tariff, when a switch to another supplier would save money on their energy bills if only they could understand clearly how much they would save.
The proposals that Ofgem are suggesting to simplify the residential energy market are:
- Set the standing charge price for all energy providers
- Gas and Electricity bills should have one tariff
- Energy companies should have one standard tariff for all of their payment methods whether it is direct debit , cheque or cash payments
The plans to implement changes to the residential utility market are likely to take place in 2012 and Alistair Buchannan CEO of Ofgem said that “encouragingly it is good to see major energy companies such as British Gas, Eon and SSE are recognising the problems and they are looking at producing simple understandable utility bills.”