Customers reject Contact's offers

"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".