Energie-Mythos #9: Your Incumbent Supplier Makes the Best Offer
“Our supplier knows us, they’ll give us a good price.” It sounds like loyalty and reliability — and it’s still too short-sighted. Because a good relationship is no substitute for a market price.
What it’s really about
The incumbent supplier has an information edge: they know your consumption and contracts, and they know a switch means effort. That weakens your negotiating position. Without a second or third offer, you have no benchmark for whether the renewal is fair. An offer, after all, is not yet a market price.
Why the myth persists
Renewing is convenient: no paperwork, no switch, no risk. But that convenience has a price. Renewal and incumbent prices are often above what the market would bear — not out of bad intent, but because no competition disciplines the price. Across a portfolio, that mark-up adds up year after year.
Why competition sets the price
Several providers bid against each other — that moves the price.
The incumbent price becomes comparable in the first place.
No mark-up for inertia: those who can switch negotiate differently.
Transparency instead of a leap of faith.
Terminate and tender in good time, rather than sliding into an automatic renewal.
The NeoBid view
For asset managers this is a returns topic: convenience costs yield, often unnoticed. The NeoBid platform organises the competition the incumbent avoids — it gathers comparable offers from several suppliers and makes the incumbent price assessable in the first place.
Conclusion
It isn’t loyalty that lowers the price, but competition. The incumbent rarely makes the best offer — only the comparison shows what the best offer is.
NeoBid doesn’t think of energy as a price comparison — but as a strategic value driver for real estate portfolios.
