Can we win the Gas and Electricity price wars by switching suppliers?

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.

Our most common reaction to energy switching is to switch off and pretend we didn't hear anything! We are either too scared to switch suppliers now in case for some reason their own supplier becomes cheaper in time or simply can't be bothered.

Tomorrow we will probably hunt around before filling up the fuel tank in our cars just to save a couple of pounds, probably wasting that same amount in fuel and time looking for the cheaper option, or causing long term damage to our engines by running the fuel too low forcing debris through the engine yet the thought of switching suppliers - No chance!

My take on all of this is simple, due to our ignorance and laziness, the big suppliers are laughing all the way to the bank. Millions of us have switched some form of monthly outgoing beit Mortgages, Mobile Phone bills, Home and Car Insurance - even Banks. Surely we can't be that lazy or ignorant - can we? We all strive to get the best deals when we buy a car or even when we go to the supermarket, so why do we insist on paying too much for our Energy.

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 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 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.

This gave us all a perfect excuse to do nothing, We could be blissfully happy knowing that we could do nothing and not feel guilty about it. Of course now we haven't got that excuse, Energywatch keeps a close eye on things for our piece of mind and still millions UK households waste £millions every year by not switching to cheaper suppliers. One comparsion I can note from recent times was a gentleman who had never switched before, he saved £330 a year. If that was our insurance quote or mobile phone bill, we'd be patting ourselves on the back for a job well done. According to price comparison sites such as Money Angels, many of these cheaper suppliers actually offer a better level of customer service too.

So, can we win from the Gas and Electricity price wars? Of course we can, we just have to do something about it ourselves and stop waiting for a miraculous price decrease that may never happen. My advice is switch now and if another company offers a better deal, switch again and again, and again. We are only ever have to give our suppliers 28 days notice so take back control and be a more assertive consumer.

Article Source: http://www.realtyreferenceonline.com/articles

You can contact Lewis Taylor at his free energy price comparison site and you can use the free service to switch suppliers.
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