Jan has high anxiety and mental health issues. She advises that she didn’t sign any forms or have any verbal agreement with the salesman that came to her door. She was unaware that her energy provider had been changed until she received a cheque from her old provider for $180 as refund for her Centrepay deductions, which was the remaining money left over after her account had been finalised. 

Jan was left confused and upset and – her Centrepay arrangement has been cancelled and she didn’t know who her energy provider was or how to get her old provider back.

 I live with my aged mother who is 81 years old and has dementia.

Last night I got home to find she had signed up to change my gas and power to a competing company. She couldn’t even explain to me what had happened – she didn’t understand and there is no way she would have been able to give the information required to do this without some major assistance which should have been a warning to the salesperson that she was not well.

 I got home and tried to stop the changeover but when I got onto the company’s call centre I waited for over 25 minutes on the phone. I only have a prepaid phone as I’m digging myself out of a hole and it has been tough. I have $29 phone credit to last a month.

Anyway, after the first call used up over half my credit, I got hung-up on by the company’s representative.  I called back waited another 10 minutes only to get told they can’t call me back – so I was left paying for the phone call. Then after a little more talking – I get told well mum had every right to sign the documents and there was nothing that they could do.

After explaining for the third time that she had dementia and that I had Power of Attorney, I was finally put through to a supervisor who then put me through to another department. After explaining the whole thing again and asking to be called back – which they refused even though I had used almost my whole month’s phone allowance – I finally got put through to Customer Cancellations after an additional 15 min – and FINALLY someone understood what I was saying, and he was able to call me back.

15 min later and the cancellation was put through

 I’m now going to put three Do Not Knock Signs up on the door and try and stop them again.

- Ellen

Bob recently signed an energy contract presented to him by a door-to-door salesperson.

Unfortunately an error was made and it appears that his neighbour’s energy provider is now his and his provider is now his neighbours – and they are also in opposite names.

Confused ?

So are they.

Due to the mix up neither Bob nor his neighbour are authorized to speak to either provider due to the wrong names and addresses being on the contracts. The stress this has caused has been enormous, and there has been financial cost with both households being charged disconnection fees. Last we heard this process was still ongoing.

 I work for a large welfare agency in regional Victoria and we manage a number of properties for the Office of Housing. One such property is in a block of units, surrounded by other low cost housing, where our clients, a middle age with an intellectual disability, lives. He cannot read nor write fluently and has very poor communications skills.

We provide affordable rent which includes a fee that covers the gas, electricity and water charges to the property. This means that all services connected to the property are in a business name and paid for by our agency.

This client has been approached a number of times by energy providers and on two occasions these canvassers have managed to change the electricity from our business account into her name, despite our agency’s best efforts in requesting a flag be put on our account with our nominated provider that, under no circumstances, would our account be removed from our provider.

The impact on the client has been enormous, not only have they incurred a debt with the providers who changed the accounts over, but the client has also been paying an amenities fee on a fortnightly basis – sadly the debt has now been forwarded to debt collector.