The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) has made a decision under section 37 of the Better Bills Guideline to require retailers that re-use plan names to provide additional information on bills.
Retailers that re-use plan names will now be required to add the following information below any better offer message alerting customers to a cheaper plan:
If this plan has the same name as your current plan, you are on an older version of the plan which has different rates. You can still save money by switching to a newer version.
The decision by the AER to require this information aims to address customer confusion that may result from some retailers creating newer versions of existing plans with the same name. It was made after engagement with a range of stakeholders, with the majority supportive of introducing this requirement.
The AER has provided retailers a three-month timeframe to add this additional information to their bills, however retailers are encouraged to implement as soon as possible.
The AER will monitor retailer compliance with this decision. Retailers are expected to report any failure to implement this change in the required time in line with existing breach reporting processes.
The AER will continue to consider the retailer practice of re-using plan names and options to address this as part of our upcoming reviews of the Better Bills Guideline and Retail Pricing Information Guidelines.
For any questions about the section 37 decision, please email aerretailcompliance
aer [dot] gov [dot] au (aerretailcompliance[at]aer[dot]gov[dot]au).
Background
Retailers are required to prepare and issue bills to small customers in accordance with the Better Bills Guideline. Under the Better Bills Guideline, bills to small customers are required to include a message at least every 100 days (better offer message) to alert customers to whether they can save money if they switch to a different plan with the retailer. Section 37 of the Better Bills Guideline allows the AER to require retailers (or a subset of retailers) to include additional information on the first page of bills.