Commerce Commission chair John Small said if electricity suppliers were found to be misusing their market power to deter competition, it would take action. Photo: RNZ / Alexander Robertson
The Commerce Commission is calling for business customers to anonymously report unfair or anti-competitive electricity industry practices.
The commission has an anonymous reporting tool that it uses to collect information about other industries, such as the grocery sector.
It is now making it available for reports about electricity as well, with encryption to avoid information being disclosed about the person making the report.
Commerce Commission chair John Small said if electricity suppliers were found to be misusing their market power to deter competition, it would take action.
The initiative was prompted by comments by Auckland Business Chamber chief executive Simon Bridges reported in the media, which said his members were uneasy or scared about raising complaints about their energy bills with their providers because they worried about retaliation, Small said.
"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," he 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."
Further investigation had not settled on anything concrete, he said, so it was decided a way to "flush out" the problem could be to expand the anonymous reporting tool.
"That works for us in other areas like cartels and groceries where there's the same kind of problem ... 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."
He said he had concerns about the power sector more generally.
"We are working very closely with the Electricity Authority at the moment on a range of things. We will start to articulate a medium and longer-term regulatory strategy within a few weeks. It is under active consideration. I'm not at all happy with it."
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