Look out for the Cowboys

You can be sure that as the snow melts and reveals the damage done to roofs, drives, drains and more then the cowboys will be out and about knocking on doors and looking for those that are most vulnerable to being ripped off.

Time to be careful and cautious and to do your best to know who you may be doing business with. TSI remains on record as calling for a complete ban on cold calling by property maintenance people but our calls continue to fall on deaf ears. I remain astonished that in this 21st century UK we don't have any reliable way by which consumers can choose a trader to repair or improve their home. We have a plethora of different schemes but none of which are significant enough to appeal to needy consumers.

Some schemes are run by the commercial sector and others by the public sector, many by my trading standards colleagues such as 'Buy With Confidence'. What we need is a mark and brand that enjoys high levels of consumer confidence and awareness. For example the 'kitemark' was once known to and seen by consumers as a mark of product quality. We have made such poor progress over the past twenty years and its about time we tackled the challenge.

Oh well and before I get too depressed......at least my Millwall Lions won 3-0 and moved up to 11th in The Championship!

Energy Selling - No Cold Calling

I was struck by today's announcement by the energy regulator OFGEM that it is to look at the profits being made by the six primary energy companies. Are they playing fair? Alastair Buchanan the OFGEM CEO suggests that they may not be.

Of course if the energy market to consumers was truly competitive then consumers should be confident in their ability to shop around, switch supplier and secure the best deals around. But I think many are asking just how truly competitive the market is with seemingly each supplier following suit when it comes to raising prices. It always just seems a matter of time before they are all on the same hymn sheet.

This comes on the heels of the concerns recently expressed as to whether the energy companies are all complying with the new Code intended to aid transparency of pricing when it comes to, for example, doorstep selling. At TSI we have been saying for three years that the doorstep cold call selling of energy is outmoded and unfit for a 21st century consumer energy market.

The OFGEM Code is intended to be its last chance saloon to prove that the industry can cold call cleanly. Alas I see no future for such a crude selling method for such an increasingly high cost product. The more expensive our gas and electricity gets the more inappropriate doorstep persuasion and selling is. I look forward to one day seeing Alastair Buchanan agree.