Ask a residential or commercial customer what rate they signed up for, and most can't tell you. They don't carry 11.8 cents or 14.2 cents around in their heads. What they carry is a feeling: the last bill was higher than they expected, or it wasn't. That gap — between what the customer thought they were buying and what the bill actually said — is where trust is won or lost, and it rarely has much to do with the headline rate on the contract.
The 2026 customer research keeps landing in the same place. J.D. Power found utility brand appeal slipping as bills climb, with affordability now the issue customers feel most sharply. Escalent's Cogent work shows industry brand trust essentially flat — and, notably, billing friction reemerging after a few years of gains. Both point past price to the same culprit: the experience around the price.
Here's the uncomfortable part for anyone in retail energy. A customer who pays a competitive rate but gets surprised by a teaser-to-variable jump, a bundled fee they didn't notice, or a delivery charge they never understood will tell you they got a bad deal — even when the energy charge was fair. Meanwhile a customer on a slightly higher but completely predictable plan will tell you they're happy. The rate was never the product. The predictability was.
Transparency isn't a disclosure PDF. It's whether the customer could see, before they signed, what the bill would actually total — energy plus delivery, plus whatever resets in month 13. It's whether the renewal notice reads like a heads-up or like a trap. It's whether the number on the marketing page survives contact with the first invoice.
The providers pulling ahead in the trust studies aren't necessarily the cheapest. They're the ones who made the all-in cost legible early and never made the customer feel outsmarted. That's harder to build than a promotional rate, and far more durable — because a rate expires, and the memory of being surprised doesn't.
The lesson for the industry is almost boring in its simplicity: stop competing to be remembered for your rate. Customers won't remember it. Compete to be the provider whose bill never made them feel foolish for choosing you.
Sources behind the post (for your reference, not for the body): J.D. Power 2026 U.S. Utility Brand Appeal / Utilities Outlook 2026; Escalent Cogent Syndicated 2026 (brand trust flat, billing friction reemerging).