Quote:
Originally Posted by Sephiroth
But that part of Shell that supplies another part of Shell is making profits from what they sell to Shell. If you get my drift.
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Exactly. It's similar to how pub chains say they have to increase prices because their supplier has increased prices to them
..
...bur the same company owns the beer supply company
and the pub chain.
---------- Post added at 15:00 ---------- Previous post was at 14:54 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by tweetiepooh
They may have got customers who are willing to take the risk and pay less for their fuel. The risk is that you could face much bigger increases if things don't work out.
Companies could have offered a higher rate but will some sort of guarantee to buffer future rises and protect against the company folding.
If you choose to take the risk you need to be willing to face the risks too. Same with any other purchase. You can buy top end stuff knowing you will get support and good goods, or take a risk with some cheap label sticker in China from a market stall in cash. You may be OK with the cheap version, it may all be fine but you don't know and if it fails you will be out of pocket.
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If things didn't work out and higher increases were proposed, their (price sensitive) customers would simply switch to another supplier and, again, they would face going bust. This would serve no purpose other than to stifle competition.
The cost of paying for energy companies that fail is borne by all customers via a levy on their bills. If a 'risky' company had to charge a levy to protect it's customers, it would most likely wipe out any savings offered, making their business plan unworkable.
I like the Labour idea of a people's energy company. People would still be free to use any supplier, but the non profit peoples supplierwould be the cheapest.
Other companies would either end up going bust or try to compete with things like better customer service.
This idea also has the advantage of not needing the taxpayer having to pay our to nationalise the existing companies.