Even Accountants Cannot Decipher Energy Bills

Tue, 18 Oct 2011

Even accountants cannot decipher energy bills nor energy tariffs according to new research from Which?

Which? used an accountant to try and calculate how much should be paid for a bill.

It has a long held assumption that energy companies construct their tariffs to deliberately confuse customers, therefore, Which? decided to test to this presumption.

So, the fact that an accountant struggled to calculate the bill highlighted the sheer complexity of the entire billing system.

Which? picked 36 individuals, including an engineer, a solicitor, a company director and an accountant, to decipher their domestic energy bill using nothing but information from the supplier's website. Only the company director managed to do so successfully.

Which? stated that this deliberate complexity concealed poor deals for customers. The watchdog asserts that energy tariffs are full of tricks and caveats which aim to maximise what customers pay, including tiered pricing which penalises low use customers and promise discounts which fail to materialise should consumers leave before a set period.

It is important for customers to be able to pick the cheapest tariff for them and currently this is almost an impossibility.

Which? is launching an Affordable Energy Campaign which is designed to assist the public to spend as little as possible on gas and electricity.
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