The Commerce Commission is urging business customers to confidentially report any unfair or anti-competitive practices within the electricity industry.
ComCom uses an anonymous reporting tool to gather information about various industries, including the grocery sector. It is now extending this tool for reporting issues related to electricity, featuring encryption to protect the identity of the person submitting the report.
Commerce Commission chair John Small said the initiative was prompted by media reports of comments from Auckland Business Chamber chief executive Simon Bridges, who said his members felt uneasy or afraid to raise complaints about their energy bills with providers due to concerns about retaliation.
“I contacted Simon because that’s really concerning. He got a group of his members together, the Major Electricity Users Group, people like that. I got the Electricity Authority, and we had a couple of hours talking about it in a group,” Small said.
“I really wanted to find out first of all what were the complaints and secondly was there evidence of breaches of the law the commission could prosecute. It was a really good discussion, but it was all anecdotal.”
He said that further investigation had not revealed anything concrete, so it was decided to expand the anonymous reporting tool as a way to “flush out” the problem.
“That works for us in other areas like cartels and groceries where there’s the same kind of problem,” Small said. “People can tell you stuff absolutely securely, knowing their name is never going to be published or found out.”
“It might be that it doesn’t get used; it might be all this goes away. Sometimes a shot across the bows is all it takes to sharpen up behaviour.”