Oil platforms in the Cromarty Firth.

Centrica’s lost 70,000 customers this year and they’re celebrating

They lost 1.3 million last year, and they're blaming 1) big oil and 2) governments for it all.

The company that owns British Gas, Centrica, has lost 70,000 customers so far this year, which might sound like bad news, but in comparison to last year is apparently pretty good.

What it means: People have been switching gas companies a lot recently, largely because of changing prices. Last year, Centrica lost 1.3 million energy accounts, about 10 percent of their total holdings.

But the very cold weather this year which was a bit of a nightmare for everyone else was actually a blessing for British Gas, who did well from all of us turning up our heating in the face of the Beast from the East. Their profits are looking better than expected, aside from the cost of having to fix about double as many boilers as last year.

Sadly, that's not going to translate into lower prices for us: they say the price of oil, and the cost of implementing government regulations on smart meters and more efficient energy use means prices are going to keep going up.

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