Two more energy suppliers cease trading.

Apparently the gas price has just peaked again, something to do with the Germans suspending permission for the NordStream2 pipeline.

The second one deserves to go with a name like that

Why so?

I wonder what those companies that many local authorities were trying to get people to use are still going? Its a big failure of the so called market forces driving prices down by competition is it not. All that is happening is that the big boys are mopping up. Brian

Well both are daft in my view. What do they actually do, just gamble on energy prices over time, and provide bill services to the punter.

Brian

Some players in the market place were just (re)-selling the "products" from the big players - at a discount.

and some of those now outsource their billing to other "non-generating" energy companies, so what value does that leave them providing? advertising?

A gamble on making money by selling (long) at fixed retail prices while buying (short) at world prices. Worked so well for Northern Rock (up to 2007).

They are in the same league as short sellers on the stock market. Some of the latter make lots of money but occasionally they lose their shirts. Pure gambling (mostly)

But adding value, surely ?

No different to the car/home insurance industry where a (parent) insurance company trades under different brand names and many others in the market place (AA, supermarket branding etc) are also selling the product from the same few companies.

You missed my question about what value is being added.

I have had many really s*it experiences with these leech companies that are more than happy to take your money, right up to the point where there is any suggestion of a problem with the product or service. Then it becomes "nothing to do with us, guv" at a speed that possibly defies physics.

My two favourites are mobile resellers, and parcel2go. Closely followed by any of the "JustRateMyCheckaLocalBuilder" type sites.

There's no mention yet of who is going to take over their customers, although with less than 50,00 customers combined it should not be difficult for a large company to absorb.

The problem is that in absorbing them, the bigger company loses money. It's only the fact that there is a law forcing them to take on such customers that makes them do so.

You can bet if there were no law, then there would be 50,000 people without a supplier.

Oh they'd have a supplier, it's just the price they would pay that would differ.

Possibly 50,000 still getting gas and electricity but with no-one to bill them.

Yup, it must be getting harder for OFGEM to get another supplier to take these on.

According to the OFGEM website the new supplier/s have yet to be appointed some 6 days after the failures.

Most other stranded customers have a new supplier allocated after 3 or 4 days.

Still not announced, Bulb next?

Octopus is now predicting 9 to 10 weeks from the time that Avro went under to them having full details about final usage etc. - for reasons outside of their control.