Age UK questions CMA remedies

Age UK has raised questions over the Competition and Market Authority’s provisional remedies for the energy market, suggesting elderly customers could be left confused by a “deluge of mail” following the CMA’s recommendation that energy suppliers be forced to share their data on so-called sticky customers with rivals.

Age UK special adviser Mervyn Kohler told Utility Week that the data sharing remedy will “impact on a lot of older people”.

Kohler said: “An awful lot of the sticky customers in the system are older people who have never actually bothered to move away from their historic energy provider. We are a bit concerned about the potential deluge of mail shots and sells that they will receive.

“I think there is a fundamental gap in the CMA’s judgement in appreciating how much the older population will have to learn to take advantage of the new market they are trying to establish.”

Kohler also said that he dreaded the day there are “five or six hundred different tariffs in the market place and we will have to manage to explain to our older population how to navigate their way around that,” as a result of the CMA’s proposed removal of the four-tariff rule, which limited the tariffs suppliers could offer.

“We are going to have to push water uphill here to actually explain to the elder population what all the different tariffs mean in general terms and this bewildering new choice which will be open to all of us at some point in the near future,” he added.

Age UK’s comments come following the publication of the CMA’s remedies to help to promote competition and engagement in the market. The daa sharing remedy has also been criticised by independent supplier Ovo.

The final report is expected in June 2016.

Read Utility Week’s analysis on the CMA’s provisional remedies here