Energy watch to be no more as of next week--just what we need eh.

[piratecat]

Just caught the last of this on GMTV. Apparently we will ahve noone to complain too. great. There's the Energy ombusman but they threw out 95% of thier claims at the last report.

They had a woman on there who, if energywatch hadn't become involved might have lost her home, becuase british gas would not admit to a billing fault.

oh dear - did they say why? would of thought their business was booming.

there's also ofgem

just looked at the link and ofgem don't deal diretlty with customer complaints

oops - directly

Bad news considering that without Energywatch the power companies will do what they want. Ofgem have done nothing to curb the rises in energy costs despite other European countries having limits (5% in France I believe.) So Ofgem is basically there to justify the companies getting away with charging us as much as they like.

I know, i was really shocked by this. It's rather a 'terible' coincidence, now the power companies can exploit us further.

What the fuck are the government doing??

its to merge three consumer organisations into one- a consumer rights body, energy watch for gas and leccy, and postwatch.
the service to be delivered by the new organisation wont have any local regional representation (postwatch does now- dont know about the other ones).

I did get to meet Ed Mayo- who will lead the new body- to discuss the end of postwatch.
Frankly I dont think he grasped how complex the work was that postwatch did, and certainly did not appear to want to transfer any of the skills from the local offices. He just wanted it to run out of London- "where we can get the top policy people" but not people to actually do anything on the consumers behalf.
Its a cost cutting excersise- and the vunerable people that cant fight for themselves will lose out.