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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-10-19 Daily Xml
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CUSTOMER SERVICE

The Hon. G.A. KANDELAARS (15:50): I rise today to speak on the issue of customer service, with a feeling that I am sure many share; that is, the notion that quality customer service has been lost, particularly when dealing with service providers who operate their service centres via call centres. Nowadays, face-to-face contact is near on impossible.

I would like to relate a difficult situation faced by a constituent I dealt with recently when dealing with a very well-known electricity provider. The constituent had installed a solar power system at his home. This required the installation of a new import-export meter. The constituent had already had two meters installed in his home, one a three-phase meter and one a single-phase off-peak meter.

When the constituent received his first electricity bill, he found that his off-peak meter was now being charged at peak rates. The constituent called his service provider to seek an explanation as to why, all of a sudden, he had been charged peak rates for power consumed on a time-controlled circuit of his off-peak meter. He was told that the matter would be referred to the company's metering group for investigation and that this would take two to three weeks. After three weeks, the constituent rang the utility company, as he had heard nothing. He was again told that the matter would be referred to the company's metering group and that the investigation would take up to two weeks.

The constituent then received an amended bill, backdated to August 2008. The retailer believed that the constituent should never have been billed off-peak power and should have been billed for peak power. The retailer believed that he had been undercharged, and they demanded that he pay over $400 in arrears in two weeks. As I said earlier, the off-peak meter was installed into his home some 14 years earlier, and he had been billed for all of that time at an off-peak rate.

The constituent tried on four separate occasions to have the bill corrected but to no avail. The constituent stated that he felt that the retailer believed that it was his responsibility to prove that the retailer was wrong. The constituent, fortunately, is technically minded and wrote to the retailer with photographs of his off-peak meter to show the various registers on the meter. After writing to the retailer, he gave the retailer two weeks to respond but, unfortunately, he again heard nothing.

After weeks and weeks of frustration, he sought the assistance of the Energy Industry Ombudsman's office which, I have to say, was extremely useful and helpful. He forwarded to them a letter he had written to his electricity retailer. Once the Ombudsman had become involved, my constituent was contacted by the electricity provider within two days and, after another two days, he finally had the matter resolved. It is no surprise that the constituent no longer is a customer of this company that gave him so much grief.

The issue I raise here is that today there is a need, when consumers are faced with such poor customer service, to take action, and the only action obviously available in many circumstances is to look for a new service provider. The point I make very strongly here is that, when you receive poor customer service, you should act upon it. Clearly, in the day of the competitive environment between a lot of utilities, we as consumers should respond to poor customer service.

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