Snowy Hydro's energy retailers Red Energy and Lumo Energy will offer all their electricity customers on standing offers an automatic and unconditional discount of 10% commencing January 1, 2019.
The discount will apply unconditionally and will provide customers in Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland savings on their electricity bills of between $195 and $270 per year for an average user.
Ironically, many of these customers were previously on market contracts and paying less, but once their contracts expired they had to be moved to standing offers, as required by current regulation. Retailers are required by law to roll customers onto standing offers once their market contract expires, unless the customer provides their explicit consent to take a better deal.
Iain Graham, CEO of Red Energy and Lumo Energy said "we have attempted to contact these customers several times by post, email and phone to offer them a choice of market offers and competitive rates. These customers have not taken up this opportunity and have remained on a standing offer. Regardless we want to provide these customers with a better deal and are therefore delivering them an unconditional 10% saving on their electricity bills. We don't want these customers to be disadvantaged."
There are no conditions - customers will not have to wait twelve months to be eligible for the discount, nor will they have to be a concession customer, a pensioner or a health care card holder.
"Given the current energy regulation, providing these customers with a discount without their explicit consent is technically not allowed. However, we believe in doing the decent thing by our customers who by fault of the regulation have been left paying too much" said Mr Graham.
