Origin Energy ordered to pay $17m for breaching customer obligations

Electricity provider Origin Energy has been ordered to cough up more than $17.6m in penalties for breaching its obligations to customers requiring life support and suffering financial hardship.

Victorian Supreme Court Justice Michael Osborne handed down his judgement on Friday afternoon after the ESC brought two proceedings against Origin. Picture: Aaron Francis

Electricity provider Origin Energy must pay more than $17.6m in penalties for breaching its obligations to customers requiring life support and suffering financial hardship.

Victorian Supreme Court Justice Michael Osborne handed down his judgement on Friday afternoon after the Essential Services Commission brought two proceedings against Origin.

Origin failed to properly record or update information related to 10 customers who required life support equipment or had a person at home who did and whose electricity or gas supply could not risk disruption.

The retailer mistakenly failed to register four customers as requiring life support while an operating system error prevented another’s registration from being completed.

In the case of five other customers, Origin failed to update their account status to show they had medical confirmation.

Origin Energy has been ordered to pay more than $17.6m in penalties for breaching its obligations to customers requiring life support and suffering financial hardship. Picture: Bloomberg

There were also repeated breaches for customers suffering financial hardship.

Under energy rules, retailers must provide payment assistance for customers in hardship and provide information about assistance they are entitled to which Origin repeatedly failed to do.

A separate proceeding was brought over the disconnection of one customer and series of billing related contraventions.

Origin failed to notify some customers they had been overcharged within 10 days of becoming aware of the overcharging.

Over an eight-month period in 2022, it also erroneously notified 395,00 electricity customers and 260,000 gas customers about its “best offer” which was required under energy rules.

Justice Osborne noted Origin fully co-operated with the commission and “acknowledged its liability at the earliest stage in respect of the allegations made in both proceedings”.

Essential Services Commission Chairperson and Commissioner Gerard Brody said the regulator took Origin to court because “upholding consumer protections is paramount”.

“The Essential Services Commission took Origin to court because we think retailers upholding consumer protections is paramount, and today’s historic judgment shows the court does too,” he said.

“Retailers play a central and proactive role in offering customers support and strong consumer protections – that’s a non-negotiable for every business operating in the Victorian market.

“The Essential Services Commission pushed for significant penalties in this case to ensure the cost of breaking consumer protection rules cannot be written off as a cost of doing business. We wanted the penalty to send a message about the importance of these rules, and we’re pleased these record penalties have done that.”

“While today’s decision will be felt most directly by Origin, it will reverberate in the boardrooms of all energy retailers. And the message is simple – compliance with consumer protections requires investment and attention, it cannot be an afterthought.”

Origin executive general manager of retail, Jon Briskin, said: “We are sorry we didn’t meet our regulatory obligations for these customers, and we are committed to doing better with significant resources dedicated towards improving compliance performance.

“We self-reported most of the breaches to the regulator, co-operated fully with their investigations and take full responsibility for all of the breaches before the court.

“Many of the breaches were caused by errors in our legacy customer service platform or by human error. With all of Origin’s retail electricity and gas customers now being serviced through our new customer service platform Kraken, we expect to deliver great service and improved compliance outcomes.

“Customers suffered no or limited loss or damage, and we remediated affected customers where appropriate.”

Originally published as Origin Energy ordered to pay $17m for breaching customer obligations