I was listening to Radio 5 last night and the subject came round to the household gas and electricity suppliers.

Apparently there's a Commons Select Committee that has been looking into the energy market in terms of dodgy dealings in switching suppliers and also the lack of competition that the current commercial arrangements bring to the market.  The view expressed was that OFGEM was not speedy enough in reacting to some cases of mis-representation by energy supply companies and also that the market wasn't working - as evidenced by the view that gas and electricity prices are linked to the price of oil when it goes up, but apparently not when it goes down.

I'm not going off on one (again) about that - but lets just recognise that the price of oil is now around $56 a barrel and has been below half its peak value for the last month...

Anyway, before I stray too far, the point of this post was that the other night, I answered the door to a couple of youths purporting to represent one of the electricity companies.  One of them had a list with my name on it, and after confirming my name and that I currently paid my bills by direct debit, launched into an immediate patter about how he could save me £120 a year on my gas and electricity bill.

He also mentioned that 'Jane' from Number 24 had signed up and was going to take advantage of this major saving opportunity, which apparently was all the evidence I needed that this was the deal of the century, because everyone knows just how astute 'Jane' is..    He then told me that all I had to do was read the meter in about six weeks and that would be it, so could I just sign on his sheet...which was when my internal scepticism alarm went off.

I was a bit suspicious of this whole doorstepping sales approach - I personally don't feel happy when someone tries to give me the hard sell  - and its rare that anyone will talk me into a decision without letting me see any evidence to back up their claims.  So I refused and the aforementioned youths wandered off to pick on someone else on our street.

It was only afterwards that I thought about what I was being sold - basically they knew nothing of my circumstances, which tarriff I was on, did I have insulation & double glazing, how much I paid per month, what the state of my boiler was, whether I primarily used gas or electricity for heating etc... so the only thing he could have been referring to when talking about my potential savings was the fact that I paid by direct debit.  Which leads me to the conclusion that all he was selling to me was a £120 discount per year for paying using this method.  There was no comparison of tariffs, no talk of usage, only that I would save simply because I didn't pay cash or cheque.  The salesperson on my door step wasn't telling me any lies, but was extremely careful only to promise a £120 discount on my bill, not a reduction in what I was currently paying to my existing supplier. 

This is exactly the kind of mis-representation that was being talked about on Radio 5, and the reason it stuck with me is that this issue was supposed to have been addressed by the industry, and yet it seems to me that this mis-selling is still going on.