WE all love a bargain don’t we? There’s a great deal of pleasure in knowing we have secured the item or service we needed for a reasonable price, or better still it cost less than we were expecting.

Contrast that with the feeling we all have if we’ve paid over the odds.

At best it leaves a sense of disappointment. At worst it can leave us feeling conned, scammed or betrayed. It is deeply unpleasant.

Yet all around us it’s happening on a daily basis. We can sense it when we fill up the car with fuel, or pay for the groceries or a utility bill.

How often have you said to yourself recently: “How much?”

I shake my head in disbelief every time I am at the petrol pump.

Lo and behold it’s emerged that we’ve probably been paying more for fuel than we should have been in the last few years.

A Competition and Markets Authority report last week showed we’d been paying more because the supermarkets had increased their margins, and competition between retailers had weakened.

I can remember covering the fuel protests in the year 2000.

Back then there was always a sense that the price of diesel and petrol went up almost immediately that oil prices rose and then took an age to fall again as the price of oil dropped.

Twenty-three years on and nothing seems to have changed.

I still get that sense I am being taken for a very expensive ride when I fill the car.

Now the retailers are facing rules to make them more transparent about prices. Let’s see if it makes a difference.

Heating oil is another commodity where pricing feels very random.

We are not on mains gas where we live and rely on oil for heating and hot water – yes I know I am very strict with the heating – but we still manage to get through a couple of tanks a year!

I always shop around for the best price when I fill up the tank.

I have even joined forces with a neighbour so we could order at the same time and negotiate a bulk buy discount.

We went online to find a competitive price. My neighbour then phoned through the order to explain we were hoping our joint approach would mean a small discount.

The person at the other end of the phone then quoted us a price that was higher than the online cost per litre and no bulk discount.

When my neighbour queried it he was told it was because the price over the phone was always higher than online.

We did eventually get it at the online price but no further discount.

But why should the price be different? It discriminates against those who can’t or won’t order online.

And don’t get me started on broadband and mobile phone contracts.

If you read the small print, virtually all of them automatically increase their prices every year by 3.9% above the Consumer Prices Index. Why?

Why is it necessary to automatically add nearly 4% on top of whatever prices are increasing by?

Yet, if you are brave enough and savvy enough, you can usually haggle them down.

My broadband provider recently told me how much the contract was increasing as it was coming to an end.

Now, it would have been easy to overlook this, or to simply not have the time to question it. The payments would have automatically increased and on we go. But I have cottoned on to this over the years.

Each time the broadband contract is up for renewal I have to play this little game where I go online, search for a cheaper deal, phone my supplier and tell them I am leaving because I have found a better price.

Without fail they always manage to better the deal I have found and in most cases I have ended up paying my existing provider less than I was paying them before.

But why should we have to go to all this trouble?

If, after a little arm-twisting, they can offer a better deal, why don’t they just do that as a matter of course?

The answer is they are hoping for inertia. I am sure they think many of us are simply too busy to notice and because many of these bills are on direct debit it can sometimes take us a while to spot and we therefore do nothing about it.

Meanwhile, the bosses of some of the biggest supermarkets have been hauled in front of MPs to explain why they are not passing on the lower wholesale cost of goods quickly enough. They argued they were remaining as competitive as possible.

But the fact they had to go before a committee of MPs suggests there’s more than a whiff of suspicion they could be doing more.

Some prices are slowly coming down, but not quickly enough for most of us.

Now we’re facing substantially higher water bills to pay for improvements to the infrastructure to reduce the amount of sewage going into our seas and rivers.

Eh? Isn’t that why here in the South West we were paying the highest bills in the country for years on end?

Talk about taking the proverbial! Now it transpires water companies have been loading themselves with debt whilst paying vast amounts in dividends and executive pay. Who’d have thought it?

Well, most of us to be fair.

The feeling we’re not always getting the best deal also extends to the banks.

They’ve been asked to explain why they are very quick to put up mortgage costs as interest rates rise, but seem less keen to boost returns for savers.

And so it goes on. But many of these sectors are supposed to be regulated on our behalf. I am beginning to think the regulators need better regulating.

Often that oversight is down to MPs, but sadly too many of our elected representatives have been too busy regulating each other over apparent misconduct or breaches of parliamentary codes.

If nothing else, the cost of living crisis is finally shining a light on the cost of everything.

Hopefully it will result in a bit more transparency, fair play and decency.

You can’t put a price on those qualities.

Bye for now.