Energy suppliers desert PCWs as pressures mount

Compare the Market has completely paused its energy comparison service after several suppliers restricted the number of tariffs available, with only a handful of deals available on other sites.

An error message posted under the energy tab on Compare the Market’s website confirmed it was temporarily pausing energy comparison, with a spokesperson confirming this was due to the unprecedented rises in wholesale energy costs.

They added: “At comparethemarket.com, our priority is to ensure that our customers can be confident that the product they purchase is going to meet their requirements. In order to protect our customers we have therefore decided to temporarily stop offering energy quotes via our website during this period of uncertainty.

“We will resume energy comparison as soon as we can be confident we can offer true comparison for customers.”

Utility Week ran several searches this morning (17 September) using different postcodes on Uswitch, MoneySuperMarket, GoCompare and Confused.com and found only four suppliers still offering tariffs. These were Eon Next, So Energy and ESB Energy (two suppliers which recently merged), Outfox the Market and Good Energy.

Uswitch was found to have just seven dual fuel deals to switch to from the four suppliers mentioned above.

A similar message appears on that website also, confirming wholesale rises have had an impact on the number of deals it can offer.

The company did however say a further deal from Shell Energy was available to some customers, but this may be dependent on their postcode.

Additionally MoneySuperMarket found just four deals when Utility Week ran a comparison through its website, GoCompare showed four deals from three suppliers as did Confused.com.

“Due to the significant and unforeseen recent increases in the cost of wholesale energy we may only be able to switch you to a very limited number of deals, or even in some cases no deals,” a statement on Confused.com said.

Soaring wholesale costs has led to chaos in the energy markets during the past couple of weeks, with industry experts predicting a number of supplier failures as summer ends and winter begins.

According to data from EnAppSys average power prices over the past two weeks have been eight times higher than the average in 2019.

Phil Hewitt, director of the energy market analyst, recently told Utility Week that further supplier failures were inevitable and that retailers should be lobbying Ofgem to give them some relief from the price cap. He said many suppliers had been far too relaxed about actively trading in the intraday and advanced markets.

Ofgem recently confirmed the fourth energy supplier failure in a week which saw more than half a million customers enter the supplier of last resort process.

To add even more woe for the sector, a recent fire at a National Grid interconnector  means the equipment will be unavailable until at least next Spring, halting the import of energy from the continent.