Energy bills too difficult to navigate, says EnergyAustralia boss

Energy bills are still too difficult for customers to understand, the boss at one of the nation’s largest retailers says. Here’s how to make sure you’re getting a fair deal.

Energy bills are too confusing for customers to understand, the boss at one of the nation’s largest energy retailers has conceded.

EnergyAustralia’s managing director Catherine Tanna said many Australians are “time poor” and “don’t have enough time in the day to navigate their bills.”

This is the despite the energy sector working around the clock to clean up bill transparency — as part of an industry overhaul — and make it easier for customers to decipher their bills.

“It’s hard enough, to be honest, for us to understand and keep up with all the rule changes so it must be terribly confusing for customers,” Ms Tanna said in Sydney today.

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“We made the most dramatic changes for July 1 to simplify things to make it easier for customers to calculate and understand what the offering is.”

EnergyAustralia has more than 2.5 million electricity and gas customers and is the nation’s third largest retailer.

Significant changes to the energy sector were rolled out on July 1, including a default market offer (DMO) in NSW, SA and southeast Queensland.

MORE: Pay-on-time discounts dumped by retailers

Energy bills remain difficult for many customers to navigate and know if they are getting a good deal.

The DMO acts as a reference price which allows consumers to compare all market offers alongside each other.

In Victoria, the Default Market Offer was introduced to make it fairer for consumers, moving them from energy plans with higher prices onto cheaper deals.

But many Australians struggle to understand what the true costs of energy are because of separate supply and usage charges and multiple discounts.

This includes some retailers who continue to offer pay-on-time discounts and reductions for using direct debit to pay.

However some of the country’s biggest retailers dumped pay-on-time discounts from July 1 including EnergyAustralia, Origin and AGL.

But despite rising power prices being one of the biggest cost of living concerns for many Australians, Ms Tanna said since July 1 changes there had been a slowdown in customers jumping retailers.

“Anecdotally for now churn (where customers switch retailers) has slowed down a little bit,” she said.

Nationally the market churn rate was at 20.7 per cent, while in July this year EnergyAustralia’s churn rate was 17.9 per cent.

@sophieelsworth

Originally published as Energy bills too difficult to navigate, says EnergyAustralia boss