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The power to be incompetent

Assuming there's no massive storm (see yesterday's column), most of us continue to rely on electricity that's delivered by way of the national grid and other infrastructure.

Once the power is generated it's made available to a range of retailers who then bill customers after adding their margin to the prices involved.

It's a pretty simple system and seems to have worked reasonably well for decades.

When Max Bradford (who still hasn't followed-through on his threat to sue Aardvark for defamation by the way) decided to "reform" the electricity industry in NZ, we suddenly saw the introduction of competition which, so Max told us, would see prices fall.

Well it's been some time since Max's bold promises and prices have done nothing but go up. His reforms were a bust and the promises made by the government of the day remain unfulfilled.

But can't you just change power companies to save money?

Perhaps you can but, if my experience is anything to go by, you'll still get ankle-tapped by unscrupulous power retailers or incompetence even if you try this tactic.

Early in November of last year, a nice young commissioned salesperson knocked on my door and told me I could save money by switching from my existing power provider (Genesis) to the company he was touting (Pulse Energy).

I looked at the figures, crunched the numbers, checked the fine print and decided that the savings were worth being locked into a relatively short-term contract with the new provider.

I was told that within 4-6 weeks, the Pulse people would come to my house and replace the existing meter with one of their uber-smart meters.

Part of the savings that were on offer from Pulse hinged on their ability to use these new "smart meters" to adjust the tariff charged to match the time of day and day of the week.

Instead of paying a fixed charge per Kw/H, I'd get discounted power after the evening peak and on weekends. That suited me just fine.

November slipped by and I got another bill from Genesis.

December came and went... no sign of the Pulse people -- and no power bill from Genesis either, so I figured at least something was happening. Perhaps I'd get a power bill from Pulse this month.

January came and went... still no power account from either Genesis or Pulse -- but I did get a letter from Pulse advising that they were way-behind in their smart-meter installation programme.

Not wishing to find myself facing a huge power bill after months of non-billing, I rang Pulse and asked why I hadn't been billed. They told me that they wouldn't be taking over the account and billing me until Genesis had done a "final reading".

I rang Genesis and asked when I'd be getting their final account. "In a couple of weeks" I was told and, sure enough, a couple of weeks later I got a double-sized power bill for two months worth of electricity, based on an actual reading and not an estimate.

"Great" I thought to myself. Now I'll be getting that cheaper power that Pulse promised...

Then another power bill from Genesis arrived...

Hang on, didn't I just get a "final" account from them. If it was "final", surely I ought not be expecting to receive another bill charging me another $160 for another month's power.

The next day I got a letter from Pulse that started out "Dear Customer..." and advising me that their charges would be rising as of April 1.

Oh dear, it seemed as if I was a Genesis *and* a Pulse customer at the same time. Would I be paying for the same power *TWICE* now?

So I rang Pulse...

After being told their operators were all busy and waiting on hold for a few minutes I got ahold of someone who had to try and contact head office (who were all busy) but eventually they told me that Genesis had advised them that the power company switch was canceled "at the customers request".

What? I never requested that the switch from Genesis to Pulse be canceled!

The Pulse helpdesk operator said they'd had a few situations like this recently, where Genesis had seemingly told porkies about customers wanting to cancel their switch to Pulse.

So I rang Genesis to find out their side of the story.

"Wrong switch type" they told me. Apparently (according to Genesis), Pulse had stuffed up their customer switch request in some way so Genesis had rejected the application. They strongly denied that they'd claimed I'd withdrawn my application to switch and laid the blame squarely at Pulse's door.

Back to Pulse -- who most adamantly insisted that the entry on the ICP register shows that Genesis claimed the customer (me) had withdrawn their switching request.

So here I am -- four months after requesting a switch of power companies I'm still with Genesis and not saving a bean.

Either Genesis or Pulse are telling porkies about the reason why I haven't been switched and I can't find out which it is.

This kind of dishonesty or incompetence endears neither company to me and I'm almost at the point where I feel like switching to *any* power provider other than these two circuses.

Have any other Aardvark readers had difficulties in switching power providers?

What happens if/when I get two power bills for the same wad of power?

Max Bradford, you should be ashamed of yourself for creating this hideous mess within an industry as crucial to the nation as electricity supply.

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