4 April 2014: Evening Standard report results of a survey commissioned by what appears to be a new collective switching business ThisIsTheBigDeal.com. Results not published on the company’s website, and the numbers of people surveyed not revealed, but the story sets out that “almost a million Londoners do not bother to open their gas and power bills despite being worried about the cost, a damning survey revealed today”. Likely a 1,000 or so people surveyed, so some heroic extrapolation going on here – but issues raised such as consumers getting confused by their bills, and not even attempting to review their energy costs have been similarly identified in earlier studies. It’s not clear from the story if Londoners are better or worse than consumers in other regions.
DECC interestingly undertake a regular ‘Public Attitudes Tracker‘. The February 2014 release says the following (p4):
- 47% of people were very or fairly worried about paying their energy bills, similar to September 2013 (48%). In December 2012 50% of people were very or fairly worried about paying their energy bills, compared with 45% in September 2012.
- 32% of people said they will or may switch energy supplier in the next 12 months, unchanged since September 2013 (34%) and December 2012 (35%).
- Four in ten (42%) of people trusted their energy supplier to inform them of the best tariff for them, similar to March 2013 (46%) and March 2012 (44%), when the question was first asked.
- Half of people (49%) said they trusted their supplier to provide impartial and accurate advice on energy efficiency measures, similar to March 2013 (51%) and March 2012 (53%), when the question was first asked.
Nothing however on whether consumers understand their energy bill.