My energy supplier has gone bust!

hazel · 01-31-2021, 07:39 AM

But the energy that you use doesn't actually come from the company you appear to be buying it from. It comes from all the companies that collectively feed power into the network. The idea that you are buying it from one company rather than another, as I might buy eggs from Sainsbury rather than Tesco, is a complete legal fiction. And economics gets distorted whenever fictions of this kind are treated by law as facts. Look at all the damage the idea of "intellectual property" has done to software.

In the same way, waste removal is a public good, so it should be paid for through local taxation, just like street lighting and sewerage. In my locality, landfill waste, food waste and waste for recycling are paid for in this way, but garden waste has to be paid for separately. I refuse to pay on principle because I have already paid for it with my rates. If they refuse to do the job I've paid for, I can't force them to do it, but I can refuse to let myself be scammed for extra payments. So when I generate garden waste in summer, I take it down to the tip myself. It's an extra task but it pays for itself in the satisfaction I feel in not allowing myself to be a cretin and pay twice over.

There might be some justification for making people pay for landfill waste in order to reduce waste and improve recycling. But if you charge for recycling too, you give people no incentive to do it.

HappyTux · 01-31-2021, 12:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hazel

Pay-as-you-go meters are not widely used these days, but they are inflicted on poor people who have failed to pay their energy bills. You see, there are laws against actually cutting off energy supplies to families containing children or vulnerable adults, so the companies cheat by using PAYG meters that just don't deliver unless they are fed. That way they can say they haven't cut these people off, they have cut themselves off by not paying.

I think you have a point when you say that a nationalised industry just needs to pay its way whereas private industry needs to make a profit to pay its shareholders. The counter argument is that competition between companies can improve service and bring down prices. The problem is that this argument doesn't work for natural monopolies like gas, electricity and water, which is why I think these should be run as public services.

Indeed any captive market is exploited by the players in it, this lie that there is a free market is just that a lie they tell for the justification they make for the exploitation. With things like computers or other goods with many many players in the mix there is competition, but where the low number of players involved. Like with the ram and hard drives, the processors it is all exploitation of their dominant positions for higher than would be prices. It is the same with everything, then the problem of the captive regulators, like we have with the CRTC the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission, who in theory are tasked with regulation all the telcos. Well it is revolving door of telco executives on the board who keep making anti-consumer regulations that cost us billions a year in extra fess. I stop now but the list is endless I could go on just as long about it too...

Edit: extra fees....

hazel · 02-01-2021, 09:08 AM

According to the Which website, my new supplier is EDF. That's one of the big six, so the terms probably won't be particularly good (though on the other hand, the chances of them going bust are virtually zero!). I haven't heard officially from OFGEM yet but Which says customers were moved over yesterday.

I'm thinking of perhaps moving from them to Octopus who have a very good reputation. I've rather gone off the idea of finding cheap deals via a comparison website. There's no value in it being cheap if they can't maintain their business on those terms.

business_kid · 02-01-2021, 11:04 AM

If the Irish experience is anything to go by, later entrants into the market should offer more attractive terms …

You can't hope to compete offering higher prices …

hazel · 02-01-2021, 11:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid

You can't hope to compete offering higher prices …

You can't hope to compete by going bust either! What's the point of offering prices you can't make a profit with just to attract customers?

DavidMcCann · 02-01-2021, 11:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hazel

I've rather gone off the idea of finding cheap deals via a comparison website.

Sometimes the comparisons are not even honest. CompareTheMarket were recently fined £17.9 million — naughty meerkats!

hazel · 02-01-2021, 12:00 PM

I have heard that companies have to pay to be included on some websites.

JSB · 02-02-2021, 12:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hazel

Here that doesn't happen. You get transferred to a new company seamlessly and the electrical current and gas continue to flow in the mean time.

It is good to live in west europe!
I live also in europe, but state is very chaotic, corruption, and companies going bankrupty. energy, water, trash, everything sometimes.

hazel · 02-02-2021, 07:30 AM

I have just received two emails. One is from GNE apologising for "inconvenience caused" (presumably by their bankruptcy, not by the borderline threatening email they sent me a few days ago!). The other is from EDF confirming that they are now my supplier. They claim that "all customers will see a price decrease versus their current tariff until at least 30 September 2021^." Hmm.

@teckk: I'm going through the new supplier's FAQ and they do a pay-as-you-go tariff with a monthly bill such as you describe. But I don't think I want to do that.