It wouldn't wash in the UK, for example, a company saying that Welsh customers had to pay £100 for some service that the rest of us could get for £40.
That isn't entirely true now, is it? Unless the product is classified as a necessity and regulated pricing, the business has a freedom to price it in accordance to their business model. In fact, as we are talking about WR here (i havent read the original thread, it was huge)
This regional based pricing is already getting the energy companies into a bit of trouble with the regulators as it is considered unfair practice
ENERGY isnt chewing gum. You cant mix the two and claim the same rules apply. Energy SHOULD be regulated as it is a living neccessity. I SHOULD be able to charge whatever i want for chewing gum and have the freedom to find the right buyer.
moreover, if i choose to sell a chewing gum and state that you get a box of them free if you run around my shop every other tuesday at precicely 1.14PM wearing your wifes night gown (so in my mind i could attract a crowd to buy more chewing gum) and you agree to it, then you are bound by the terms of our agreement. Should you fail, i am within my rights to take my box back.
If a business decides that they will offer anything free, or with purchase and adds conditions to it which are clear and prominent, then the buyer must carry some of the responsibility for their actions in relation to those terms. Without delivng into the other thread and just focusing on your comment regarding a WR of an amount being unfair, because you can get lower WR elsewhere (to follow on your welsh pricing example), does not mean that this business must meet the lowest price or else, or that they don't have other opportunities on offer that supplement their busines model.
That is the beuty of the world today - it gives YOU, THE BUYER, the choice of what works for you and what doesn't: as long as the information about the offering was presented to you in an honest, non-ambiguous format, YOU get to decide where your hard earned penny is best spent. However with that choice, also likes the burden of responsibility that you made it.
in addition to which energy is defined as an essential service, like water.
key sentence in your comparison, but you kind of skimmed over it.
I must say, coming back and seeing silva's name in red shocked me. i didnt read the thread as im horribly behind on things after my prolonged leave, but fact remains that the PAB process challenges operators to JUSTIFY their decisions to an un-bias third party and the very act of justification carries some burden of necessity for responsible behaviour.
The way i see it, PAB service simply puts the fullstop on blatantly wild-west behaviour on businesses that either 1) dont care to follow their own rules, or 2) create such rules that it gives them a window to not follow at their discretion them or claim the rules were broken due to lack of clarity. As i said, simply someone forcing businesses to justify themselves or be poorly labelled is a huge positive that has been felt throught the industry - and if you need proof of that, all you need to do is look around at how hard casinos try to meet these standards.
How can anyone say that such service is "wrong", or has something wrong with it, is not within my realm of understanding. It may not offer full consumer protection, but it's definitely a step (i'd call it a long jump personally) in the right direction. And as for complete consumer protection, i'd say myself as a consumer leave it up to me to do my out-most to protect myself.