This year, when I asked for an explanation Origin’s response was the same as before, “The reason we transfer accounts to the Origin Easy or Origin Basic plan by default is that these are the default plans set by the energy regulator. This is standard practice across the industry to ensure customers always have an energy plan in place without interruption”.
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The “reason” is clearly specious.
If a customer does not choose a plan, they are charged the default reference price anyway – and their energy supply is never interrupted. Also, I found that while Origin’s ruse is applied by some retailers, it is not “standard practice across the industry″.
The consequences of this and other deceptive marketing practices can be gleaned from a recent report by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission into energy market competition.
The report found that 73 per cent of the seven million residential electricity customers in South-East Queensland, NSW, Victoria and South Australia are not on their retailer’s cheapest plan. The estimated average cost for each affected customer is $291 a year (for small business customers the average cost is $554 a year.)
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While the default ruse is not solely responsible for a collective cost of $1.5 billion for those five million Australian households, it would constitute a significant portion, likely amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
And what I find particularly galling is that whoever your retailer is or whichever plan you are on makes no difference to the quality or reliability of your energy supply. Retailers do no more than collect payments from consumers to pass on to the electricity and gas companies that produce and transport the electrons and gas molecules to our homes and businesses (extracting their costs and profits in the process).
I was so incensed by yet another repeat of this ruse by my (about-to-be former) retailer that I have alerted the ACCC, the AER and the NSW Energy & Water Ombudsman. This deceptive practice should be banned, if not illegal in the first place, and all retailers should be compelled to act transparently and honestly in the best interests of their customers, as some do.
A final word of advice – never accept the plan your energy retailer suggests. Always check out other plans and other retailers. You could save yourself hundreds of dollars every year, as I am about to do (again).
Ted Woodley is a former managing director of PowerNet, GasNet, EnergyAustralia and China Light & Power Systems (Hong Kong)
