personal finance software: Personal-Finance

Why should I switch suppliers? Can I win the Gas and Electricity price wars?

In short, yes but it is a difficult situation that faces us, with the price wars going on, who will win?

Why do we find ourselves thinking 'why should I put up with being treated this way by my energy suppliers?' The simple truth which is hard to swallow is that we bring this on ourselves and the big guys are just exploiting a weekness in our attitudes towards energy switching in the UK.

Are we all guilty of switching off as soon as we hear about a cheaper supplier or are we just that lazy? I hear some people talk of their fear of switching suppliers in case the prices are hiked up on them or their previous supplier becomes cheaper.

None of us are too lazy to stretch a few more miles out of the fuel tank as we drive around looking for a cheaper service station, of course we've probably just wasted fuel in getting there and caused minor damage to our cars by pulling debris from the bottom of the tank through the engine. Why is it that we would go through such efforts to save money and still do nothing about our energy bills?

Due to our laziness and, in many cases, ignorance, the big guys who supply our gas and electricity are getting richer and richer. We've all shopped around for various insurance, better deals on our Mortgages, lower mobile phone contracts and many of us will even switch banks to get the best interest rates. If we are a nation of strong consumers, then why do we continue to burn our money by sticking with expensive energy suppliers?

It's not the fault of the suppliers, if they have millions of customers, why should they drop their prices? The fact is that there are better deals out there and many of the lower priced suppliers have high levels of customer service too. We constantly moan about the price of our gas and electricity and yet we still refuse to budge.

What seems to be stuck in our minds is that when the market was deregulated, armies of door knockers were mobilized and sent out in their hundreds to catch us just as we sat down for our dinner. By switching personal finance software our suppliers with them we might have a brand new Bentley on our drives go off for a 3 month cruise around the Carribean! Ok maybe not but you get the idea. People were writing into TV's Watchdog in their masses complaining about how they haven't saved any money or they haven't received personal finance software a statement for 9 months and just got hit with a huge bill. Nowadays, there are very tight regulations that energy companies must adhere to in order to satisfy it's customers.

Is this still in our minds? Or is it just an excuse to do nothing. The fact remains that millions of UK homes are wasting £millions every year on over priced energy bills and we seem to be happy to carry personal finance software on trying to ignore the fact that Mr lower priced supplier can save us up to and over £330 per year. Imagine if our house or car insurance quotes came out that much cheaper, we'd bite their hands so fast that we could get arrested for a hand biting related incident (not sure if this is an actual crime in the UK but I wouldn't be surprised). Of course the crazy part of it is that many of these lower priced suppliers actually offer a better level of customer service than some of the more expensive suppliers according to figures found on many price comparison sites such as Money Angels.

In answer to the question posed earlier, we can win out of the Energy price wars, we just have to shop around and realise that it takes no time at all to switch, personal finance software and if we want personal finance software to switch again, we can simply do so. Suppliers only require 28 days notice and there are many companies that will take care of the whole switch for you. The key is for us all to stop complaining and do something about, only then will we all be winning consumers in the Energy price wars.
Author: Lewis Taylor