They haven't been buying future gas at cheaper prices. They have been buying future gas at higher but guaranteed prices. Or hedging with derivatives which amounts to paying an insurance premium against price rises.
What *should* have happened is that you got stuck paying market prices and your bills trebled. Ofgem prevented that, so the cost has fallen on non cheapskate customers and the tax payer.
I hope not. people who are essentially taking commercial risks need to be exposed to the risk downsides as well as the upsides. It would have been better if nearly all the high street banks had collapsed...
Which works both ways and is not the simple task that you seem to think it is. For most of the minnow energy companies, the costs of hedging would have wiped out their profits.
Meanwhile OFGEM has made it clear who is actually going to pay for all these cheapskates -
"Energy companies will be repaid the cost of taking on the customers of bankrupt suppliers sooner than expected, adding further upward pressure to household bills from April.
Bloomberg has the details:
Paying for the cost of absorbing millions of customers without being reimbursed for as long as 18 months was one of the key gripes of energy suppliers still left in the market.
Regulator Ofgem has brought forward the date suppliers can start to recover these claims via bills to April, but that means higher costs for consumers already facing a hike in the nation?s price cap."
It is more than likely your free food packages were donated. Probably delivered by people who were associated with a charity. Charities fund a lot of medical research, enabling things like transplants.
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