No Reg - Your fault, just got to work out how...
Jan - That is just a good newspaper headline and if those businesses could just decide a price based on a 'profit per customer' you may have a point but life is not like that. Pricing, as I have said, is a very complex matter. If they made a mistake of a fraction of a percentage in calculations that massive profit could have turned into a loss. In fact the calculations made assume a whole range of different factors any one of which could have a massive impact on the margin and it could have so very easily have gone the other way with the result a large price increase next year. We live in uncertain and volatile times and this profit level may well mean no rise, a lower rise or with some companies maybe a price fall next year. It is not only what is charged to customer that determines the profit, it is also contract prices and administrative costs. These change during the year while the price you pay may only change once a year.
No-one should be naive enough to think that in some magical way a state system would somehow defy the same market forces and produce cheaper power. Life is not like that and lacking the profit motive and competition, prices would be a lot higher. Experience of state monopolies bears this out. Oil suppliers dealing with State monopolies can demand higher prices and State monopolies can charge whatever they like.
