Quote:
Originally Posted by MTVN
They are needed if they want to maintain their positions as the biggest energy companies
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This is essentially admitting that they are a cartel... they should be in competition with
each other to be the biggest / best. But they're not, they're in cahoots, because they can each make more by agreeing to not compete against each other and being the "biggest compan
ies" with customers bouncing around between them annually via price comparison sites. There is literally no other way to explain them all hiking prices by roughly the same percentage at exactly the same time.
Also, comparing themselves to phone companies and even moreso supermarkets, is a bit of a joke.
In the case of phone companies, it's plain to see that competition has worked extremely well for the consumer, with phone contracts either remaining static in price or falling dramatically... it used to cost a fortune to run a mobile phone, but the effect of competition with contracts means that you can now get a brand new high end smartphone with generous allowances for £15 - £20 a month. 5 years ago it was more like £30 - £35 a month. 5 years before that most people were paying "per text" - a bill of £60+ wasn't unusual for me.
As for supermarkets, you can't compare them at all to energy companies. It's a 2 minute transaction, you can shop around. Tesco cheaper than Asda for apples? Go to Tesco. But Asda's got a deal on washing powder? You can go there too, on the same day. Again, the effect of competition between supermarkets is very obvious.
Energy providers, on the other hand? You can't look at who is offering the best deal on a day to day basis and say "Oh, I'll get my gas from them today then". If you could, maybe they would actually try to compete with each other.