Click photo to enlarge
Graeme Purches
"Angry and annoyed" Contact Energy customers are brushing
off the power company's attempts to retain them and continuing
to sign up with rival companies.
It is understood Contact has shed at least 6000 customers
nationally after it announced a 10% power price increase in
September and an increase in its directors' fee pool last
month.
The number of customers the company had lost could not be
confirmed due to its "commercially sensitive" nature,
communications adviser Louise Griffin said yesterday.
Contact had noticed "some impact" from customers leaving, but
she denied the figure was as high as 10,000 as reported by
Radio New Zealand yesterday.
As previously reported in the Otago Daily Times,
Contact had offered customers who were leaving incentives to
remain with the company.
At the time, these were $50 off the next two bills or 200 Fly
Buys points.
However, the company was now working "on a case-by-case
basis" offering customers varying incentives, Ms Griffin
said.
In doing so, Contact had started a "bidding war", according
to TrustPower community relations manager Graeme Purches.
One customer caught in the middle was Bill Ellicott, a
retired Dunedin man, who had switched to TrustPower after 30
years of power supply from Contact.
"They had ruined in five minutes what we had built up over 30
years."
He felt the loyalty between vendor and customer had been
strained beyond breaking point due to events of the past
months.
His feelings towards Contact worsened when he received a
phone call from the company 10 days ago.
A discount incentive of $50 off his next bill was offered to
him to stay with the company, which he turned down.
He was then offered a $75 discount, which made him question
how high the company was prepared to go to keep him before
reiterating to the caller he was not interested in any offer.
"It's not a matter of a dollar or two after 30 years," he
said.
However, Mr Ellicott had heard of various discount offers,
with some being offered up to $200.
Mr Purches believed many Contact customers were not just
switching because of money but because they were fed up with
how they were being treated.
As of Monday, 2825 South Island Contact customers had signed
up with TrustPower, 1898 of whom were from Dunedin, he said.
"South Islanders appear to be most cheesed off," he said.
TrustPower was not the only company to reap the benefits of
Contact's situation.
About 2000 people switched from Contact to Meridian Energy in
the last week of October and the first week of November,
Meridian external relations manager Claire Shaw said
yesterday.
"It was a very high volume of calls during that time. That
has petered off now, but we are still busier than usual," she
said.
Mercury Energy had also recorded a "dramatic influx" in
Contact customers switching over, spokeswoman Hannah Searle
said.
The number of new customers was "commercially sensitive", but
she said it was "in the thousands".
