There’s a pattern across almost every household bill in Australia: the best prices go to new customers, and the longer you stay, the worse your deal quietly gets. Consumer groups call it the loyalty tax, and it’s the single most expensive bill habit a household can have.

What it costs

The numbers are consistently ugly. Analysis of 2025 utility bills put the collective loyalty tax at billions of dollars, with the average household paying around $569 a year more than it needed to across energy, broadband and mobile. The ACCC’s electricity monitoring found households on plans more than a year old paying roughly $238 a year more than those on newer offers. It also found that more than 80% of households in the national electricity market could find a cheaper plan by shopping around. For home insurance, comparison analysis has put the gap for non-switchers at several hundred dollars more again.

What the loyalty tax costs, by reported figure Energy (plans over a year old) $238 a year more (plans over a year old) Home insurance (non-switchers) several hundred dollars more Energy + broadband + mobile $569 a year on average, combined
Three separate reported figures, not parts of one total. The electricity-only gap and the broader combined average are drawn to scale; the home insurance gap has no bar, since the guide gives no exact figure for it.

No single bill looks scandalous. A few hundred here, a couple hundred there: spread across four or five services it routinely clears $500 a year.

Why it happens

The mechanics are the same everywhere:

  • Acquisition discounts. Providers compete hard for new sign-ups, so the advertised price is a new-customer price. Your plan keeps its name while its discounts quietly expire.
  • Price rises land on the quiet. Increases arrive as a line in an email nobody reads. The plan you chose carefully in 2023 is not the plan you’re on now.
  • Switching feels harder than it is. The fear of paperwork, downtime, or exit fees keeps people put (even though in energy, for example, the new provider handles the whole switch and there’s a cooling-off period).

Providers aren’t cheating; they’re pricing your inertia. The only counter-move is to reprice yourself.

The once-a-year fix

You don’t need to become a deal hobbyist. One habit covers it: once a year, put each bill through an honest comparison, and either switch or use the quote to reprice your current provider. Ringing your provider with a competitor’s number in hand often gets the new-customer price without switching at all.

Where to check, honestly:

  • Energy: the government’s own comparison site (free, independent, every offer in the same format). Our NSW switching guide walks through it.
  • Broadband: harder, because most comparison sites are paid by the providers they rank: here’s how to compare properly.
  • Fuel: the one bill with no loyalty mechanic at all: just price differences between stations, visible in the finder.

An hour a year, run like a routine, is worth more than every discount docket and points scheme combined.