A third of businesses are unable to access the cheapest rates for gas and electricity because energy suppliers are using credit scores to filter out the best companies to take on as customers.
What determines which rates each business is eligible for are a dozen different variables such as postcode, consumption and increasingly… company credit scores. Business price comparison service,
Make It Cheaper, says it is regularly seeing minimum thresholds being demanded by suppliers as high as 46 out of 100. Even existing customers who are simply renewing their contracts are often unknowingly credit scored to check them out.
This research was based on Make it Cheaper’s constant monitoring of the sales requirements of each supplier (all but one of the Big 6 currently use credit scores to filter customers). Their analysis of the credit score checks of several thousand MIC customers.
They found that 33% of businesses attempting to switch fail to meet the basic criteria and so - for those with low or non existent scores - this reduces the choice and increases the price of the services offered to them. Those who fail the credit score test are often forced to pay ‘deemed’ or ‘out-of-contract’ rates which can be three times as high as the cheapest tariffs.
To find out which
business electricity rates you are eligible for, Make It Cheaper has a free ‘Business Energy Contract Checking Service’ which includes a credit score check and will tell you your earliest switching dates and the cheapest rates available.
