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Communications and utilities
News Release from: uSwitch | Subject: Utilities
Edited by the Insidemoneytalk Editorial
Team on 11 February 2008
What a difference a day makes
Yesterday British Gas had the cheapest online energy plan on the market - Click Energy 4 - charging online customers up to £313[1] less than standard customers
Today, it has one of the most expensive online plans on the market - Click Energy 5[2] - and is charging online customers only £175 less than standard customers18.6% or £138 increase is effective for new Click Energy 5 and existing Click Energy 4 customers[2] - bills have gone up from £742 to £880 Britain's largest energy supplier, British Gas, has finally felt the need to put prices up for online customers - three weeks after hitting the majority of its customers with a 15% price increase[3]
This article was originally published on Insidemoneytalk on 12 Jul 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
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The supplier had protected its online Click Energy 4 customers from its price hike on 18th January.
They saw their annual bills stay steady at £742[1] - the price it has been since October last year - while the majority of British Gas customers saw their bills shoot up to over £1,000[1].Tim Wolfenden, Head of Home Services at uSwitch.com, comments: "Today's announcement has come as a bolt from the blue - only today British Gas was saying: 'we are still the cheapest for dual fuel.' "When British Gas raised its prices for standard customers it said that it had been forced to because of higher wholesale prices in the last six months of 2007[4].
However, many eyebrows were raised by the significant price gap it brought in between online and standard customers - standard customers were paying up to £313[1] more, which many believed was discriminatory and difficult to justify.
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Clearly the pressure has now told - not just from the point of view of maintaining an unsustainably low price, but also from the public scrutiny that this two tier price system had started to attract.
"Now that all British Gas customers have seen price rises, it is time for them to start looking around to see whether they can get a better deal elsewhere.
There are still good online deals out there.
But for those British Gas customers who bought into the 'we are cheapest' message and are now feeling somewhat disillusioned, there are competitive capped and fixed price deals which will protect households from price rises at least for a while."Based on a medium user consuming 3,300 kWh of electricity and 20,500 kWh of gas, with bill sizes averaged across all regions.
EDF Energy online dual fuel plan is only available in 10 out of 14 PES regions.
For Scottish and Southern Energy, the online bill size used is for their online plan available through Atlantic Electric and Gas, which is part of the Scottish and Southern Energy group.
For more information visit www.uswitch.com or call 0800 093 06 07.
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