Re: IPA 2016 @ Adam Jarvis
the Energy Market is such a fcuk up.
Yes. Because both Ofgem and DECC/BEIS have so persistently intervened, creating new rules, new structures, because ultimately, government (and civil service) do not like market outcomes.
CoopEnergy paying out a pittance of £7 average payment per customer.
That was my earlier point about Ofgem's bias towards small suppliers. They'll happily fine incumbent companies tens of millions, but the smaller companies they let get away with murder. I work for an incumbent, and it costs us a fortune to be compliant with the rules imposed by the bunglers at Ofgem - not only fairly regular fines, but also infrastructure that we have to have, and new entrants don't eg sales call recording, plus real time human monitoring for around one in ten sales calls - ie one person makes an outbound sales call, that call is recorded, and still a person has to listen in one one in ten calls - plus the consequences of "re-education" if there's a process failure. Customers pay for that.
Or rather, THEY CHOOSE NOT TO. People use services like Uswitch, choose the cheapest fly-shit supplier, and then moan in horrified surprise that the services is shite. And cost savings are not only the slapdash approach to customer service and compliance that smaller companies have, they are legally permitted to dodge an assortment of schemes (mainly ECO, WHD, FIT) that add about £90 a year to the bills of larger companies. And that's without the shenanigans of hedging, where most small companies save money but take higher risks.
Personally, I've just taken the best three year electricity fix I could find with a company that might be around to honour it. For gas I went with the cheapest unheard of, because at this point gas is trending down and my exit penalty is modest. I'd recommend that approach to the house. Going for the cheapest dual fuel standard tariff or one year fix may look even better, but I think that's false economy because I expect electricity prices to keep rising over the next three years, due solely to our halfwit government's energy policy.