About the guidelines

The draft AER Retail Guidelines combine 4 separate guidelines into a single, easy-to-use document. These guidelines include the: 

• Retail Pricing Information Guidelines, which set out obligations for retailers in relation to the presentation of standing and market offer prices, including on our price comparator website Energy Made Easy.
• Benefit Change Notice Guidelines, which set out obligations for retailers in relation to notifying small customers when a benefit in their contract is expiring or changing
• Billing Guideline (formerly the Better Bills Guideline), which sets out obligations for retailers in relation to preparing and issuing bills that make it easy for small customers to understand billing information
• Customer Hardship Policy Guideline, which sets out obligations for retailers in relation to their customer hardship policies

Changes to the guidelines

Each guideline has its own scope and purpose while overlapping in many ways, too. 

To make it easier for retailers to understand and carry out their obligations, the draft AER Retail Guidelines combine definitions, standardised terms and design principles, which apply across all guidelines combined in the document. They also include specific requirements relevant to each guideline. 

These include requirements that retailers must follow in relation to: 

• providing and presenting plan information
• preparing and issuing benefit change notices
• preparing and issuing customer bills
• developing and maintaining a compliant customer hardship policy.

We have updated the guidelines to reflect changes in the energy rules and market, simplify energy communications and regulations and ensure customers are receiving clear, useful and timely information and support. 

In doing so, we have reduced our reliance on prescriptive content and formatting requirements. These are replaced with an overarching principle which requires retailers to develop communications in a way that is honest and fair.