On this page:
The Ombudsman's view
"Credit and billing complaints remained high in the January to March 2023 quarter."
Energy and water consumers can teach us valuable lessons about the important issues taking place in the community. While news headlines give us an indication of the broad changes, the voice of individual consumers helps us understand, in detail, how these changes are affecting people. It can also give us insight into the flow-on effects of many other factors which can exacerbate social and economic changes, and helps us to identify where good practices are working well and where improvements are needed.
Our data shows that cost-of-living issues remain of most concern to consumers. Credit and billing complaints remained high in the January to March 2023 quarter. Credit cases made up 14% of all cases in the quarter and Billing cases accounted for 49%. Combined, Credit and Billing cases comprised 63% of all cases. We also saw an increase in complaints about solar products and services, reflecting continued consumer-driven interest in renewable energy options to help manage their energy costs.
We watch our investigations closely to uncover any systemic issues that could affect a significant number of consumers in the state, cause or compound new consumer harms or affect some groups of people more than others. As part of this work, we’ve been looking into cases involving victim-survivors of family violence and their interactions with the energy and water markets, exploring common issues for these members of our community. Several years on from the introduction of family violence protections in energy and water, our latest analysis of our consumer insights has identified concerns about privacy and account security, access to payment assistance, credit activity, billing issues, and customer service. Find out more about this and other issues we’re keeping an eye on in the Issues Watch section of this report.
Read on for more detail in the latest edition of Reflect. As always, you can find more data relating to our casework in the Data Hub.