Mercury attempted late ‘saves’ Hotel jobs lost
tom.pullar-strecker@stuff.co. nz
A second state-owned electricity company, Mercury Energy, has said it tried to ‘‘win-back’’ customers on the same day that a government-backed ban relating to the practice came into force.
But unlike Genesis Energy which apologised for breaching the win-back ban due to ‘‘human error’’, Mercury believed it was on the right side of the rules.
The Electricity Code was amended on March 31 to bar electricity retailers from trying to win back customers who switched to a rival, until 180 days after the customer had switched.
The Government decided on the ban in the wake of analysis that suggested Kiwis might be paying a $400 million ‘‘loyalty tax’’ because large power companies could afford to take customers for granted and wait for them to jump ship before offering them a competitive price. But state-owned power companies appear to have maintained the practice until right up to, and possibly after, the last possible minute.
The Electricity Authority said this month it was investigating 228 alleged breaches of the code by Genesis. Spokeswoman Kiely Evans said that it had made an unfortunate ‘‘human error’’ over the day the rule change came into force, thinking the ban did not come into effect until a day later than it did, on April 1. Mercury Energy said it had also tried to win-back customers on March 31.
A customer contacted Stuff and said that Mercury had called him that day to offer him a $320 credit if he cancelled a switch that he had made three weeks’ earlier.
Mercury spokesman Craig Dowling said its understanding of the rule change was that it barred retailers from trying to win-back customers who had switched to rivals after March 30, rather than from attempting win-backs after that date.
‘‘We did make calls on March 31. These were all related to ‘saves/ win-backs’ for customers where the process commenced prior to March 31. We feel we have been compliant with the Electricity Authority’s directions,’’ Dowling said. ‘‘We are engaging with them so they are aware of our approach.’’
One of New Zealand’s biggest hotel chains, Millennium & Copthorne Hotels, says it has cut hundreds of staff as a result of the effects of Covid19 on the tourism sector. The company began closing hotels not long after New Zealand entered level 4 lockdown in March. It said yesterday that it had been forced to make decisions about its workforce that had affected 70 per cent of its employees. Before the coronavirus pandemic, it employed over 1300 people at its hotels, chairman Graham McKenzie said. ‘‘We have lost and will be losing many long-serving and very loyal employees as a direct result of this crisis. We are sorry to see them go and hopefully we will see some of them again when tourism gets back to more normal levels.’’ The chain runs about 20 hotels in New Zealand.