Salespeople earn surge in complaints
MISCONDUCT among door-to-door and telephone salespeople working for energy companies has triggered a rise in the number of complaints about the industry.
MISCONDUCT among door-to-door and telephone salespeople working for energy companies has triggered a rise in the number of complaints about the industry.
South Australia's Energy Industry Ombudsman's annual report for 2010-11 shows the number of complaints rose by 15.4 per cent on the previous year, from 8840 to 10,204.
Ombudsman Sandy Canale said it was driven by a significant increase in complaints about salespeople signing people to their retailer without explicit consent, transferring wrong accounts and their general poor behaviour.
New cases related to these competition issues nearly doubled from 970 to 1897.
"This increase is concerning, as 25 per cent of the cases related to market conduct by sales agents and 62.5 per cent concerned transfers in error or without the explicit informed consent of the parties, which contravenes the Energy Retail Code," Mr Canale said.
"Whilst the companies took appropriate action to address these matters when raised by (our) office, these matters can cause distress to the impacted consumers and will be closely monitored to ensure improvement in processes by the energy retailers going forward."
Mr Canale said people were often only seeking information about a new retailer when their accounts were incorrectly transferred and urged people to contact their current energy provider after speaking to salespeople.
Billing remained the most common cause for complaints but the Ombudsman received 496 less than the 2009-10 financial year.
Mr Canale said that result was pleasing and showed retailers had stabilised new billing systems introduced in the past few years.
He said the increase in complaints was significant because, unlike in previous years, it was not directly caused by major system changes among the energy companies.
"Processes for managing (solar) customers, increased sales and marketing activity and service quality have challenged some industry members and these areas have been the subject of increased contacts to EIOSA," Mr Canale said in the report.
"The impact of increasing energy prices coupled with other financial burdens that consumers may be facing has also contributed to an increase in the number of high bill complaints received."