Vince Cable: ‘Getting the fair deal you deserve’

What’s being done to get supermarkets to display unit prices on promotions, the legislation I can find online all seems to leave it up the supermarket to decide on whether they should display a unit price.

Surely they should NOT be given a choice.

As Vince has said – and we all know – energy pricing is confusing and often consumers stay with the same supplier even if better deals are available.

Please can we have simple unit pricing like we have for petrol, so that it is easy to compare prices.

And returning to supermarket bashing.

BOGOFs and other forms of multi-buys should be banned and replaced with single item discounts. So a BOGOF simply becomes 50% off. I’ll leave you to do the maths on the myriad of other forms of multi-buys.

I’d also like to see that if you order items online at one price then that’s the price you pay when the item is delivered, and not the current in-store price when the order was packaged. Unless they show you at the time you order what the price will be.

And where the online price is specific to online shopping ( I know ASDA do this on some items), they should be forced to state that online. So you don’t see a price, think oh I’m going passed an ASDA I’ll buy it there to save shipping charges and 20 mins later you ask an assistant is this the correct price ? As this isn’t the price online, well that would be a special online only price, grrrrrrr

Mr Cable talks a good case sometimes, but the coalition government is too slow. I don;t think they have the right intent to deal with the Big 6 or any other large organisation.

It is four years since this diabolical coalition Tory/Lib Dem government came to power, why has it taken them so long to take some action against the Gas & Electricity companies increasing their tariffs year on year without any action against them. It is only since Ed Milliband threatened to freeze prices, if a Labour Government win the 2015 General Election has forced their hand.

Has anyone given any thought about the reasons we are facing an energy crisis nowadays If we, as citizens had shown any resistance to the Tory governments’ crazy privatisation policies in the late 1980s, we wouldn’t be in this situation nowadays. Back then, the rest of the world looked on in admiration at the efficiency of the Nationalized electricity industry. Those were the days of the Central Electricity Generating Board, the National Grid, and the area boards. When the words ‘power cuts’ were almost unknown. When all the power stations belonged to the nation. When unit prices were affordable to all. Now, almost all the generating plant belongs to companies from all parts of the world, apart from Britain, thanks to Thatcher and her lot selling the family treasures. And for competitions’ sake, which was meant to create a competitive market, and to lower prices. How misled, and stupid we were to believe such claptrap! It was all for selfish, and ideological reasons, Could it be that that the present government is hand in glove with the present, foreign-owned generating companies, knowing that within the next couple of years we shall be facing an energy shortage, encourage these companies to raise prices, so that consumers use less power? The older power stations are reaching the end of their generating days, and the country will be facing power shortages soon. Pretending to be acting on behalf of the consumers by ordering the distributing companies to keep prices low might fool some of the people some of the time… Panic time has arrived, and electricity generating facing shortages. We should demand that this essential industry be re-nationalized, and a programme of new electricity generating plant building be entered into, before the lights finally go out.

I am continuously appalled at the complete lack of understanding of consumers rights by retailers, cold callers, suppliers of services etc. Most of them just disregard any notion of consumers rights and break the law every time they sell.
Worst still are cold callers who have never heard of the TPS, use pressure tactics, and tell blatant lies about products. I was recently harangued by a conman selling a device to attach to your boiler which would save 35% on heating bills. I told him that I was an expert on energy saving – having written a report on the subject recently – and that 35% savings were impossible with what he was selling. he got really annoyed with me when I reminded him that he cold-called me,and that I was as a TPS subscriber. This is becoming typical behaviour by desperate conmen.
The laws must be upheld and strengthened by our watchdogs.

Its quite clear that the Government (whoever is in power) treat us, the voters with contempt, so many empty promises, endless misleading statements such as “we will make the energy companies give a clear billing system, so that people can make a choice, because they understand what they are being charged”.

Please forgive me, but how many voters bombard their respective MP with demands for change? We are a fickle nation when it comes to exercising our most powerful attribute, that being the vote, and the pen. Instead of hundreds of thousands writing to the Government on any issue not just this, there is more likely to be hundreds, therefore, they treat us with contempt, end their comfort seat and get writing/emailing, no MP wants to be deselected!

What is really required is politicians and Regulators with old fashioned BACKBONE and GUTS to take on these vested interests. Without that this is just window dressing and the Bankers and Energy bosses etc. will continue to do as they please and laugh at us all. Nothing that matters will really change.

Energy companies in particular have been a hobby horse of mine for the last five years.

I have been involved with taking a company to the ombudsman over billing and charging with some success and have therefore taken a keen interest in the behaviour of these companies and how select committees have approached the major energy firms. Too soft for my liking.

Corporate governance with certain large companies and institutions, not just in energy but banking and other areas in recent years has been a disgrace, and the idea that customers and the general public will continue to cow tow to the practices introduced for sheer profit should be thoroughly investigated where the real truth must come out.

Questions need to be asked and answers given to allegedly possible market rigging, and why the complex structure of how companies are set up to buy/sell the commodity within this structure is deemed acceptable, and whether unscrupulous practices have been going on across the board from very complex tariffs/billing to the process of increasing customers payments to encourage large credit amounts on accounts which favours highly the companies in question.

I am surprised that Ofgem and the regulators have been so slow over the handling of all these matters over such a long period.

Organisation set up to oversee best practice and tight controls should have the teeth to hold these companies to account… This has been far to slow a reaction and hopefully, through seriously tough investigations all will be revealed as time goes on, and by the way, fines do not help dissatisfied customers one jot; redress needs to be given back to customers and not end up in some government coffers where yet again customers are on a loose/loose basis.

I want to see some good old fashioned principles upheld… Good business practice that benefits All, not the top executives who are paid absurd bonuses/salaries/packages for failure.

Directories of these companies have always had responsibilities for the actions and the behaviour of the companies they run and operate, so when failure occurs why are there no repercussions?

Good companies need good governance…. what has gone wrong, and why is it acceptable to engage poor executives, ridiculous remuneration committees setting these absurd pay packages/contracts when failure takes place because of inept leadership..

Loyalty to customers, for without customers you have no business and a pride in the service being provided not some second rate approach that is so dismissive of serving the people that matter and which the business depends.

I have never understood why the Government does so little to protect British businesses.

As long as our essential services are owned and controlled by foreigners, we will never get a good deal. The don’t own us to be nice to us do they?

Business after business is taken over by foreigners then closed down. Car manufacturers, Cadbury’s, ICI come to mind.

How is it that asset stripping companies are allowed to take over our companies and destroy them?

Where is the monopolies commission every time a company swallows up one of it’s competitors?

And now Pfizer wants to take over AstraZeneca. The government should stop this before it is too late.

Another pet hate of mine is why should I have to pay for caller id just because phone companies have seen a genuine need in it to combat nuisance calls so they’re taking advantage of the situation.

If I had my way they’d be just a liable as the scam artists that kept calling me. They after all are enabling the scammers to go about the evil ways. I bet nuisance calls would almost certainly disappear if that were the case.

Whilst I agree that a simple tariff showing the fixed prices per unit of energy will help the consumer properly compare suppliers I can not understand why companies are allowed to be both supplier and generator. This clearly puts these combined companies at an advantage to any newcomer that has to purchase their energy from them before selling on to the consumer. Seperate the 2, simplify the tariffs and get the bills down!

I fear that the situation has got so bad that an organization like Which? is left very much tinkering at the edges. It is no longer sufficient to request stronger regulation or to appeal to trans-national corporations to play fairer. To protect consumers (and producers: most people will be both for much of their lives), Which? should now be campaigning for a fundamental change to the entire economic system. Judging by the justified anger in the vast majority of the comments on this page, there should be no shortage of support.

International companies have become international pirates with an agenda of paying CEO and others in the hierarchy astronomical salaries for devising systems to rip off and defraud the customer. Regulators and governments are impotent to act and by the time they do businesses have made hundreds of millions in profit and are then onto the next scam and the merry go round starts again! Modern technology has given businesses an unprecedented advantage over the customer with morality being virtually none existent when it comes to treating the customer fairly. It would be even worse if we didn’t have an organisations like Which. Just how multi national companies think it is in their long term interests to avoid paying taxes to the host government but giving profits to their executives thus weakening the government and by inference the democratic process is beyond me. It is short term greed and unless governments deal with this my forecast is for worse to come.

And there’s more …

Supermarkets should be prevented from constantly moving things around the store. Their excuse of promoting seasonal goods is just laughable. As we all know they do it to get you and I to walk round more of the store where they’ll be tempting the unwary here there and everywhere. And maybe then staff would have time to make sure there are prices listed for all goods, or better still spot obvious pricing mistakes, like the classic 59p each or 2 for £1.50, when it should have been either 2 for £1.00 or 3 for £1.50

…………………as long as the rail fare situation doesn’t develop into another confusing energy tariff debacle where consumers have trouble determining the wood for the trees – currently 350 tariffs! Heaven forbid!!!

I have long since lost faith in any Government Regulator or similar being able to deal with companies overcharging effectively. Problem too many friends in parliament for a lot of our big businesses to care how much the ordinary public pay for goods and services. The only reason it has now reached discussion point can be summed up in three words General Election 2015.