Don't You Switch, We All Switch!
Frequently Asked Questions Why don’t I just sign up with a “switching“ company? You can, nothing stopping you, but, if you change on your own you're not really putting any pressure on the Energy Companies. You are a "little fish" and they don't care. In fact they have a word for customers who switch, it's "churn" meaning you are being turned over as a commodity. You may go now but when they drop their prices a little someone else will sign up. It costs them the switching company fee to get another customer but it's nothing compared to what they will take from that customer in the next few years. I'm stuck in a contract with an Energy Company, why should I sign up? You won't be forever and if you sign up you will be offered the WeAllSwitch deal every time it happens by email. At some point you will be able to take up the offer and in the meantime we will be able to say "We have X amount of people who are going to come out of contract in X month who have expressed an interest in joining the WeAllSwitch group." Why will it make a difference? If Energy Companies don't consistently offer a better deal to the WeAllSwitch members they simply won't get any members back once they have switched away from them. Energy companies will not be able to rely on the natural "churn" that happens at the moment i.e. one customer goes and another one replaces them. In the WeAllSwitch scenario a massive proportion of customers will go and unless they can drive their prices down for the next round of WeAllSwitchers they will simply keep losing customers. This should introduce some real competition into the industry, not only between companies but also on the wholesale market. What if the Energy Companies don't bid for the membership? Considering how some Energy Companies seem to, shall we say, "synchronise" their activities, it is possible that they may collude to ignore the WeAllSwitch membership and hope we go away. However, the bigger the group, the more likely a smaller provider will splinter from any "synchronised" activity and submit an offer. WeAllSwitch will be confidentially administering the bid process and each company will not get to know if another has made a bid. There will therefore be ample opportunity for any company to steal a march on a competitor, large or small. Do you comply with the Consumer Focus, Confidence Code: This code was introduced because, among other poor practices, some internet comparison sites were not giving customers the best deal available. They were allowing their agreements with energy companies to skew their comparison results in order to favour suppliers with whom they had a more profitable relationship i.e. selling customers to companies rather than serving the customers to the best of their abilities. The current code can be found here. We support the intentions of the code but can't claim to fully subscribe to it, because: 1: We don't fit in it. We are not an “ Internet price comparison site” as defined by the code. Unlike the other members, we will be trying to obtain one deal from one supplier. However, we will offer the same terms to all suppliers (which is one of the main tenets of the code) on your behalf. We are looking forward to the guidance which will shortly be published by Consumer Focus. 2: Even if we were a traditional switching company, our opinion is that the code has room for improvement. The first line of the audit process states that the comparison company will be “informed testing will take place”. Companies are notified in advance of annual and quarterly audits. Whilst some ad-hoc audits do take place we believe that all "secret shopper" type audits should be unannounced. The code is also promoted as being voluntary. | Visit/Like us on Facebook Our Twitter Feed Our Blog |