The campaign “Everyone Connected”, headed by advocacy group Common Grace, is calling for the end of the charges, whichcan result in about $300 being stacked on to already high bills.
At Christmas, the team at Everyone Connected presented Electricity Authority chief executive Sarah Gillies with a card asking for mandatory consumer protections in dealing with power companies.
Kate Day from Common Grace is encouraging New Zealanders to sign the petition, which will be presented to the Electricity Authority later this year.
Day said disconnecting people from an essential service and then charging them is “a penalty for being poor” and should be scrapped.
In many cases, people who are already financially disadvantaged go for longer without power until they can afford to pay the debt.
“We see the fees as a penalty for being poor – they are hitting people who obviously can’t even keep up with or pay the cost of an essential service,” Day said.
“We saw one person who went without power for another week because they had to pay off what they owed before reconnection.”
Day said people had to find money for the overdue amount and then the additional disconnection penalty.
They either had to reconnect and pay another fee or sign up to pre-paid power, which has in the past been up to 13% more expensive.
People approach agencies such as the city missions and food banks daily asking for help to avoid disconnection.
The petition also calls for power companies to make prepay no more expensive than a retailer’s cheapest plan, and publish prepay disconnection data.
It also calls for Consumer Care Guidelines – such as how medically dependent and vulnerable customers are protected – to be mandatory.
Disconnected households are hit with additional costs of up to $300 to get reconnected. Photo / South Agency
“At the moment these are all sitting under voluntary guidelines that are not enforced and only monitored through companies with self-assessment,” Day said.
Day said the Electricity Authority had committed to this by January 2025 but the wording and penalties had not been finalised.
Day said disconnection and reconnection fees were a small cost for power companies to waive but would greatly impact customers.
“There are much bigger issues such as power pricing but we see this as something we can achieve and that will give tangible results to customers.
“In my mind, they are a no-brainer and give us a quick win that will help.”
Common Grace has worked with other advocacy groups and agencies such as Consumer NZ, Kimberley O’Sullivan at the University of Otago and Toast Electric Sustainability Trust.
The group has already had success with the regulator, with the Electricity Authority committing to make all disconnections public.
This will include those disconnected from pre-paid power, which is thought to be about 50 households a night.
Paul Fuge from Consumer NZ said the removal of an essential service as a means of debt management was unsafe and needed to be phased out.
“Ahead of a looming crisis we need to act to identify more appropriate and less dangerous mechanisms to recover debt,” he said.
Fuge said being disconnected also meant a poor credit score. A bad credit rating meant some households couldn’t find a new power supplier to sign them up.
Pre-paid power also has none of the other consumer protections monthly invoiced power has.
“By being effectively forced on to pre-pay plans many consumers facing financial hardship are locked out of the benefits of retail competition.”
Kirsty Wynn is an Auckland-based journalist with more than 20 years experience in New Zealand newsrooms. She has covered everything from crime and social issues to the property market and consumer affairs.
