In short, yes but it is a difficult situation that faces us, with the price wars going on, who will win?
Our attitudes towards switching suppliers leaves us open to exploitation by the huge Energy companies who have our misguided loyalty. We aren't happy with the situation yet we do nothing.
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 would be easy to blame suppliers for higher prices but with such a high volume of loyal customers, it's our fault that we are not getting the best deals because we are not voting with our feet. There are loads of better priced suppliers out there and they have great customer service too, but it's so much easier to just moan about the prices and do nothing.
I think that the problem is that when the Energy market was deregulated, the whole country was inundated by a knock at the door - just as we were tucking in to our dinner! Hardcore door to door salesmen and women (or 'Field Sales Consultants') were sent out with two missions. One was to interupt your Shepherds Pie, and the other was to convince you that by changing that little name on the top of your Gas or Electric bill - you would be rich enough to buy a Fleet of Ferari's or purchase that island in the Bahama's you've had your eyes on! Ok - an exageration but people were mislead to the point where TV's Watchdog would have enough content to run many shows relating to disgruntled customers who switched with such sales tactics. Of course there are much tighter regulations in place to look after the consumer these days and in fact, everything is now stacked in the favour of the poor little consumer yet many of us still do nothing.
With this in mind we should now feel quite happy about energy switching and yet we still do nothing about it. Before we had a good excuse to do nothing, now we do not have that luxury as energy companies have great levels of customer service and they offer excellent deals saving many households around ?330 a year. If we could save this much on fuel for our cars, the queue would be a mile long. You can even use companies such as Money Angels to switch compare energy prices as they also show levels of customer service too.
In answer to the question posed earlier, we can win out of the Energy price wars, we just have to shop around and realise that it takes no time at all to switch, and if we want to switch again, we can simply do so. Suppliers only require 28 days notice and there are many companies that will take care of the whole switch for you. The key is for us all to stop complaining and do something about, only then will we all be winning consumers in the Energy price wars.
