Families Missing Out on €2000 Annually by Not Shopping Around
An interesting report on the switching habits of Irish consumers was released earlier this month. Commissioned by permanent tsb and taken from a sample of 1001 people, the report shows that although switching is considered to be quite easy, many people are still not willing to take the time out to do it. The report claims that consumers could be missing out on average of €2,000 a year by failing to shop around.
What’s hard to make sense of is that only 1 in 10 banking customers had switched in the past 12 months yet banking customers were experiencing a ‘high level of frustration’. Similarly only 16% of people had switched their Health Insurance in the past 12 months despite Health Insurance customers found to be ‘generally dissatisfied’.
While these numbers paint a pretty bleak picture, the research did find that people are far more likely to switch utilities such as car insurance (36% had in the past year). This is encouraging but it’s important that people apply this type of thinking to all aspects of their billing life.
Earlier this year we ran the Big Energy Switch campaign. The campaign used people power to unlock group discounted electricity offers from Bord Gais Energy and was instrumental in sparking a price war in the Irish Energy market. After the end of the campaign we ran a survey to understand our member’s switching behaviours.
The Big Energy Switch Survey Report found that 54% of the 7,000 respondents took an action that resulted in a better electricity deal as a consequence of the campaign.
With 77% of people having switched in 5 minutes or less, the Big Energy Switch proved that switching electricity isn’t difficult.
The permanent tsb report estimates that consumers are missing out on average of €2,000 a year by failing to shop around. Switching all your utilities may not be as simple as switching electricity, but potential savings of €2000 make it certainly worth a review.
So check out your insurances, your electricity and your bank accounts and make sure you’re on the best deal for you. Join consumer networks like onebigswitch.ie to get access to special offers and consumer campaigns because we know as well as anyone that it pays to shop around.
