Energy companies ignore their loyal customers

SIR – In the discussions about domestic energy costs, customers are told to check suppliers’ websites and “switch” to get the best deal.

Some 61 per cent of our beneficiaries (average age: 75) are not on the internet, and the concept of switching is alien to them.

Our beneficiaries are of a generation who expect customer loyalty to be rewarded by fair dealing – a concept that some suppliers have long since abandoned, if not reversed.

Energy companies need to do much more to help them, recognising that older people spend more of their fixed incomes on heating. Cdre Malcolm Williams (retd) Chief Executive Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society Chichester, West Sussex SIR – For the Big Six energy companies – or indeed the Government – to claim there is free and fair market competition is nonsense.

The same can be said of the suggestion that the main problem is consumers not “engaging” with the switching possibilities now available.

I have undertaken regular price comparisons for as long as I can remember. This time round, when my contract expires, the best deal I can get from any of the Big Six will represent a 34 per cent increase in cost compared with the last 12 months, based on the same usage.

The only way of making at least some inroads into this outrageous price inflation is to switch to one of the newer, smaller suppliers. John Newman Hinckley, Leicestershire SIR – Lower energy bills would please all consumers, but what the suppliers, the comparison websites and the Government forget is that people choose suppliers for a variety of reasons – not just the price.

After getting my gas and electricity from British Gas and EDF for many years, I was prepared to pay more to switch to a company that understood what customer service meant. Marcia MacLeod London NW6