The Customer is King (snigger, snigger)

The latest business that is unable to tell the truth to its customers and chooses instead to dress up something unpalatable in lies and PR speak is E.ON. They have abolished the discount of £30 a year given to all customers who buy both gas and electricity without having a paper bill. They could have explained that, due to the rising costs of wholesale energy and that in order to keep their CEO and his cronies in the style to which they are accustomed, these increases are to be passed on. Unpleasant but truthful. Naturally they chose to wheel in their spin-doctors and the following emerged:

[the changes] ... make it simpler and easier for customers to understand our tariffs and compare them with other suppliers in the market.

Now, as far as I know all, ¹ of their competitors continue to offer a dual fuel/paperless discount (although this may cease to be the case as everyone gleefully follows E.ON's lead). In any case, it is one thing to make changes to simplify tariffs that leave customers paying roughly the same as before - if you hike the prices and try to disguise it by saying what a wonderful job we are doing to make things easier for you, then this is mendacity. What is more, they are the ones who chose to make the tariffs complicated and hard to understand in the first place, not their customers. How about apologising for that, at least?


1. [Has this been checked at all? Researcher, see me later: Ed]