Socket to the power companies

The season of buzzcuts and barbecues is a strange time of year to be thinking about your power bill. But recent developments demand we pull ourselves away from the trashy beach reads and back to the important work of forcing consumer capitalism to bend to our will.

This week’s target – electricity – is not an obvious hotbed of mindless consumerism. You can’t buy designer kilowatts, or haute couture currents. Wherever you live, however your power is generated, shuffling electrons are shuffling electrons.

Electricity looks a lot like a simple commodity, which leads to a trap for the unwary: you might assume it also has simple pricing.

Instead, the exact same household can pay $1000 more or less for the exact same usage, depending entirely on how they navigate the tangled confusopoly of usage plans, flat prices, contracts, and prompt payment discounts.

The end result is that New Zealand’s electricity consumers are split into two distinct tiers: those who carefully shop around between plans and providers (henceforth referred to as ‘‘Whingers’’), and those who remain loyal to the power company (henceforth referred to as ‘‘Suckers’’).

The goal of this column is to convert you loyal Suckers – the puppies that have been kicked too many times, but still love their masters – into hardened Whingers.

Some recent developments in this area will help our cause. Historically, there have been two main tools for navigating the confusopoly: the Electricity Authority’s What’s My Number campaign and Consumer NZ’s Powerswitch.org. nz website.

As of last month, they’ve fused into one super-entity, and been given a new remit to make shopping around even easier. This is great news for budding Whingers.

There’s also a new player in town: a pilot scheme called EnergyMate, which does inhouse interventions to help families in energy hardship reduce their costs. An independent review of the scheme has recommended it be rolled out in more deprived areas, which is also great news.

Switching between power providers does involve a certain amount of faffing around. But the naive view – that you should find a good company, and stick with them indefinitely – rarely works.

If you show loyalty to a brand, there’s no guarantee it will be reciprocated. In fact, the opposite is often true: new customers get offered sharper rates than existing ones.

Which means you have to play hardball. Here’s how to go about it.

First, log on to the improved Powerswitch website, and shop around for the best deal. There are going to be something like eight to 25 retailers to choose from, depending on where you live.

All you have to do is feed in some information about your typical usage, location, and so on – it helps a lot to have a recent bill to hand – and the website will recommend the best plans.

Then you can pull the old switcheroo. Once you’ve set things in motion, you’ll quite likely get a call from your existing provider trying to win back your business. If they offer you a deal, ask for it to be back-dated. You can also get in touch directly and ask them to sharpen their pencil.

If they come to the party, you can un-switch the switch (this is called a ‘‘switch withdrawal’’). If they don’t, wave bye-bye.

Going through this process might well save you a couple hundred bucks, and is worth repeating every year or so.

Graduating from clueless Sucker to professional Whinger is mostly a matter of having enough free time and mental energy to delve into this sort of financial admin. If you do have this privilege, I strongly encourage you to exercise it on behalf of everyone else.

As I’ve said before, New Zealanders are too shy about complaining. Moaners and pedants are crucial for keeping our institutions honest and competitive.

Unfortunately, the electricity market is unusually murky. The best deals aren’t advertised, and if you don’t ask, you don’t get.

That means you can’t just ride on the coattails of the dedicated Whingers forever. There’s no substitute for putting yourself out there and taking the power back.