Am I Paying a Loyalty Penalty to My Energy Supplier?

It’s official — UK consumers are getting a bad deal on gas and electricity. If you haven’t changed energy provider or tariff in the last twelve months, you’re one of the 70% of consumers effectively paying a loyalty penalty totalling billions.

Here at Onedox, we’ve developed a solution. We’ve launched a unique and free service to automatically ensure you always get the best gas and electricity deals and don’t overpay for your loyalty.

Do you incur penalties by being loyal to your energy provider?

Whilst we’re all familiar with the concept of loyalty discount schemes, the interim report of The Competitions and Market Authority (The CMA) has confirmed that ironically, the longer you are a customer with a UK energy provider, the higher price you’re likely to pay for your energy.

UK energy customers are incurring loyalty penalties to the tune of £1.2 billion per year. On average, this equates to each consumer overpaying by £160 per year versus what they need to pay, with overpayments being much higher in many cases.

The CMA have cited that whilst the big six energy providers haven’t done anything wrong, consumers are paying too much because they are automatically moved to a higher cost tariff after an initial contract period.

If you haven’t switched your tariff or supplier within the last twelve months, you’re likely to be one of the 70% of UK consumers who has been moved on to a standard variable tariff (SVT) for your gas and electricity. Being on a SVT inevitably means you’re paying much more than others for an identical product.

Why don’t people move to new tariffs or providers?

The fundamental problem cited by the CMA, is that consumers are “disengaged” from the process of ensuring they’re getting a good deal; especially as it can be a daunting or time-consuming process to comprehend our energy bills or to go through the process of switching supplier.

What’s the solution?

Roger Witcomb, Chairman of the CMA investigation, stated that “we cannot expect an overnight transformation” to this problem. At Onedox, we’re much more optimistic than that.

We think it is possible to have a solution that can be transformative and ensure consumers don’t ever overpay for their energy — because we’ve been busy building it.

An automatic way to ensure you never pay a loyalty penalty:

Here’s how it works in three easy steps:

1. Set up a free Onedox account and link your energy and other household accounts to it.
2. Bills and statements are automatically collated and clearly displayed within your Onedox account.
3. Onedox alerts you whenever you are at risk of paying too much, and provides a simple mechanism to move to the best deal.

At Onedox our aim is to ensure you never pay more than you need to for your household bills.

Originally published at https://www.onedox.com on July 9, 2015.