More than 1.5 million customers have switched electricity supplier this year – many of whom have stampeded away from the ‘Big Six’ in a flight over ‘lack of consumer trust’ issues.
This ‘stampede’ is caused by the ‘prices rise like rockets, but fall like leaves’ effect whereby householders no longer trust the Big Six suppliers ( which dominate the UK retail gas and electricity supply markets) to ‘play fair’ with them.
According to Energy UK, the latest electricity switching data shows 251,318 households chose a new supplier in May 2015, slightly up from May 2014 when 243,736 switched.
Small suppliers gained 65,052 electricity accounts in May, which is 26% of all switches.
This was on trend for the year so far with a quarter of all switches in 2015 to smaller suppliers.
Lawrence Slade, Chief Executive, Energy UK – the trade association which represents both the Big Six and the increasing number of smaller, independent rival suppliers -commented:
“There are now even more suppliers for customers to choose from. It is great to see thousands of households continuing to take advantage of this by switching electricity provider each month.
“Many customers will be coming off their fixed energy deals over the coming weeks so now is a good time to look around to see what deals are on offer.”
Consumer advocate Julia Clarke – who recently joined Scottish Energy News as Board-level energy policy consultant after a 15 year career representing consumer interests with Which? in Scotland – commented:
“It’s not surprising that so many households are now choosing to switch their suppliers. It is often their pathway to lower prices. Consumers should not be trapped into high – price contracts when there are better deals out there.”
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