Competition and choice is great

Stuff reports:

Power customers are switching companies at the highest rate for more than two years.

Across all retailers in November, some 37,000 customers changed electricity company, according to a monthly report from Meridian Energy.

The 12-month average switching rate was 19.6 per cent at the end of November, the highest since the middle of last year.

A recent global report on household electricity prices showed New Zealand had the highest level of retail “churn” in the world, ahead of Belgium and Australia which are just under 18 per cent a year.

The VaasaETT report said New Zealand had some of the most efficient switching procedures anywhere, with “a good supply of competitors”.

The latest government survey of household prices estimates the average tariff as 28.5 cents a kilowatt hour, which would make prices about the fourth cheapest compared with European countries.

37,000 customers in one month swapped providers to get a better deal. That’s excellent.

Of course that will end with the Labour/Green nationalisation policy. All generators will be forced to sell at the one price to a state monopoly, which will then sell at the one price to retailers. This will mean no effective competition and effectively no choice. Everyone will be ultimately buying their power from a Government monopoly, and that’s batshit crazy.