Review of retailers’ alignment with Consumer Care Guidelines

The Electricity Authority has conducted its first review of electricity retailers’ self-assessed alignment with the Consumer Care Guidelines.

We released our report on 15 May 2023, but we unpublished the report to address feedback from Meridian, Mercury and Nova. We would like to apologise again to these participants for the errors in our first report.

The report now published shows that Mercury (and its subsidiaries Trustpower and Globug) and Meridian (and its Powershop brand) are assessed as fully aligned with the guidelines. It continues to show that Nova has not provided a self-assessment, but we have corrected our comments about follow up action.

The Electricity Authority is committed to delivering against our statutory objectives, including the additional objective with regards to the protection of domestic and small business consumers.

The self-assessments demonstrate retailers’ alignment with the Consumer Care Guidelines is variable and implementation has not been as consistent as expected.

We are currently reviewing the Guidelines. As part of this review, we will consider the most appropriate options to give us confidence all retailers take their responsibilities to their consumers very seriously, including their most vulnerable consumers.

We expect to release an options paper for public consultation in September 2023.

Find out more:

• Summary of Retail Brands’ self-assessments of alignment with the Consumer Care Guidelines