Mercury Energy Sees Drop in Disconnections

Mercury Energy Sees Drop in Customer Disconnections

Mercury Energy is already experiencing a drop in the number of customer disconnections for non bill payment as a result of making business improvements consistent with the new government guidelines for vulnerable customers.

Mighty River Power Chief Executive, Doug Heffernan says Mercury Energy resumed last resort disconnections today after introducing all the new safeguards required by the Electricity Commission guidelines.

"Early indications are that we are seeing a significant drop in the number of disconnections which is encouraging. However it will take more time before the Electricity Commission can determine whether the new guidelines have led to a sustained reduction across the country.

"In recent weeks Mercury Energy has introduced a wide range of improvements to our credit management process, including new early warning and customer contact procedures, social agency referral for hardship cases and more flexible payment plans.

"On current indications we expect these credit and communication improvements will lead to a reduction in disconnections for bill arrears. The effect of the changes is that customers now have more opportunities and ways to pay their bills.

"This is a very positive outcome of both our own and the government's review which will ultimately benefit all our customers," said Mr Heffernan.

Mr Heffernan said after several weeks of exhaustive testing to ensure the new systems were working as designed, Mercury Energy was now confident it could move to fully implement its new credit management process, including disconnection as a last resort.

"We suspended disconnections for the past six weeks while we undertook a comprehensive review and introduced improvements to ensure we could avoid unnecessary disconnections. We are now satisfied our new checks and balances are working as designed and we have therefore resumed our full credit processes as of today."

Mr Heffernan said there had also been a significant response from customers who had registered as medically dependent on electricity. The public campaign by the electricity industry had made more customers aware of this service which guaranteed that where they made retailers aware of a medical dependency they would be protected from disconnection.

Mr Heffernan said Mercury Energy had received a positive response from social agencies and community groups who had helped improve the design of the new systems.

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