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Energy report: A spammers' charter?
Energy report: A spammers' charter?
This is a duplicate of the Blog Entry made on: 11th March 2016 14:32
This is a duplicate of the Blog Entry made on: 11th March 2016 14:32
Householders can expect the postie to deliver a bunch of letters on another anniversary - three years on from sitting on an energy deal. Following an 18-month investigation, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) proposed that anyone who has been on a standard tariff - generally the most expensive option - for three years or more will have their details put on a central database. The other 36 suppliers in the UK energy market can then pitch for their custom, by sending letters making them an offer to switch to a cheaper deal. No decision has been made yet on whether there should be a limit on the number of letters each company can send. Assume they send only three each and a customer will fairly quickly receive more than 100 letters.
The CMA has described the letters as "targeted mail" offering detail of savings to customers. Others have described them as spam. Will Hodson, co-founder of collective switching company TheBigDeal.com, said: "The CMA are naive to propose opening a database of customers to energy companies. "The proposal would take exploited customers out of the pan and into the fire of a thousand cynical sales pitches. People need independent advice from organisations they can trust to get the best deal for them." Energy UK, which represents the major UK energy firms, said: "Companies treat customers' information with the utmost care. We agree that customers should have the information they need to make an informed choice, but would like people to be able to choose if they get marketing information or not. "The implementation of these proposals will need to be carefully considered to ensure that customers' personal data and right to privacy remains protected.".....Read more here
The CMA has described the letters as "targeted mail" offering detail of savings to customers. Others have described them as spam. Will Hodson, co-founder of collective switching company TheBigDeal.com, said: "The CMA are naive to propose opening a database of customers to energy companies. "The proposal would take exploited customers out of the pan and into the fire of a thousand cynical sales pitches. People need independent advice from organisations they can trust to get the best deal for them." Energy UK, which represents the major UK energy firms, said: "Companies treat customers' information with the utmost care. We agree that customers should have the information they need to make an informed choice, but would like people to be able to choose if they get marketing information or not. "The implementation of these proposals will need to be carefully considered to ensure that customers' personal data and right to privacy remains protected.".....Read more here