ENERGY COMPANIES urge us to trust their fixed price plans but there’s no guarantee of anything. In some cases it turns out you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.
A recent Guardian article cited independent research that has uncovered some British Gas sales strategies that do not cast the energy company in a very complimentary light.
British Gas customers coming to the end of fixed price contracts received a phone call from British Gas encouraging them to sign up to the ‘Fixed Price March 2013’ contract.
The premise of this contract was that throughout its two-year duration the customer’s energy would remain the same. And it turned out that yes, British Gas did indeed raise its prices not once but twice that year, but even with these price hikes the new fixed price contract cost billpayers on average £480 more than if they hadn’t taken up the contract at all.
In the case of households with high energy demands the overpay was more like £800+. That overpay is around one quarter of the average household energy bill, currently given by the Guardian as £1,350 p/a.
British Gas’s defence was that a fixed price contract is not a guarantee, it’s simply a deal apart from the current market rate, and that rate can meanwhile go down as well as up.
The fact is energy prices are going up no matter how kind your contract. And naturally exponents of solar such as ourselves will say this leaves the concept of renewable energy and energy independence looking very attractive, as you can generate your own energy and secure a little respite from those rising prices.