People seem to expect the free market to adapt immediately, for consumers immediate benefit. The market will regulate itself, but it may not happen in timeframes that people are comfortable with.
No, consumers just expect it to show consistent reaction times.
A rumour is typically enough to warrant an overnight price hike in consumer prices. While for experiencing reductions, consumers have to wait for a few months for the market to "adapt". And in the end, it usually is the consumers that adapt to the increased prices, so companies don't see any good reason to reduce them.
You can - at least in the UK - switch consumer energy suppliers if you feel like your current energy provider is charging too much.
However, the recent crisis sent a large number of consumer energy suppliers into bankruptcy, suggesting that actually they'd been keeping too little back rather than fleecing the consumers.
Look at any stock in any stock market that had a highly positive or negative rumour associated. You will see an immediate spike or dip in value and, a slow regression to the mean.
You missed what they said: the problem is that consumer prices are not symmetric like that: prices spike, and then regress, but they never sharply dip.
