Consumers’ Union general secretary Juha Beurling-Pomoell hopes in the Markkinaraati program that electricity companies renew their so-called hybrid electricity contracts.
Hybrid contracts have been marketed as a type of contract where the price does not fluctuate as widely as with stock exchange electricity, but where consumers still have the opportunity to influence the price through electricity consumption.
Beurling-Pomoell says that the Kuluttajaliitto conducted a survey of customers of that type of contract and only slightly more than 20 percent were satisfied with their contract. They had managed to direct their consumption to cheap classes.
However, there were clearly more people who were dissatisfied.
“There are basic principles like that here, which the consumer side doesn’t like terribly,” says Beurling-Pomoell.
He emphasizes that it is already problematic from the point of view of consumer protection, when the average price of the month is used as a reference price, which, however, will only become clear after a month. During that time, however, the price can vary greatly.
Beurling-Pomoell compares the situation to the fact that the price of a liter of milk would only be known when the milk is completely drunk.
“It doesn’t really fit many consumers’, shall we say, sense of justice.”
In the survey, consumers wished that the reference price would be the average price of the day.
“We’re used to knowing the next day’s prices even in stock electricity: we see the hours, from there we get a calculable average price. Then the consumer knows that there is an average price, and if I spend during these hours, it has a price-lowering effect, and if during those hours, it has an increasing effect,” says Beurling-Pomoell.
Representing energy companies Energy industry energy market leader Pekka Salomaa points out that 98 percent of hybrid contract customers have received their electricity at the same price or cheaper than with a completely fixed contract.
Salomaa wonders if consumers may have had too high expectations of the price-lowering effect.
Beurling-Pomoell emphasizes that Kuluttajaliitto is not directly opposed to hybrid contracts, but he hopes that the type of contract would be modified.
“This is a difficult contract type to understand. And because of that, when you usually sell something to the masses that is difficult to understand, then you usually go into the woods, says Beurling-Pomoell.
He himself says that he prefers the type of contract where “the consumer retains the greatest possible power of the consumer”.
“It’s the power to change the contract,” says Beurling-Pomoell, and therefore says he prefers contracts valid for an indefinite period.
Source: www.arvopaperi.fi
