CER decision on bad debt for elect and gas

Catalpa1

http://www.cer.ie/en/electricity-retail-market-current-consultations.aspx?article=83fdd7ce-ef1b-40e9-aad1-7e377c9ffce2&mode=author

My reading on first scan is as follows, say for example your with ESBEI and owe them more than €250 for more than a stated number of days and decide to hightail it to BGE or Airtricity, ESBEI could raise a debt flag and objection,equally I think that BGE or Airtricity could equally decide NOT to take you.
All good and makes sense by what if I paint this scenario

Mr Smith is the customer at 1 The Meadow and runs up a massive bill with his supplier.
Mrs Smith nee Ms Jones rings up either the existing supplier or another one, and says I have just moved into 1 The Meadow.



See Page 10 as follows

Where a change of tenancy/legal entity (CoLE) occurs in conjunction with a CoS request i.e. where a new tenant moves into a property and then requests to change supplier, the losing supplier cannot flag this site on the basis of a debt accrued by the previous tenant. For the interim process implemented from the 17th October 2011, this will be addressed as follows in the electricity and gas markets.
Electricity Market
Where a pending loss notification from the Meter Registration System Operator (MRSO) contains a CoLE identifier; the losing supplier cannot raise a flag in relation to this site.

Ok Ms Jones will be caught for dd or a deposit but the power stays on and of course since pretty well all suppliers work via call centres and the phone, in 6 months time when Ms Jones is in trouble, Mr Smith rings up and says he is Mr Murphy, pays the deposit or dd from a new bank account......rinse and repeat.
Or am I just an old cynic:rolleyes:

maxer68

But if you're renting they all ask for a decent depos:Dit.

Catalpa1

Dont think ESB differenciate between renter and non renter, so if you have 4 guys in a flat, if they jsut change the name and set up a new bank account are you not good to go all over again :eek:

January

maxer68 wrote: »

But if you're renting they all ask for a decent depos:Dit.

Not if you pay by DD.

Ste.phen

It seems like the OPs post can be summarised as:
'I've noticed that if i commit fraud, i'll have a financial gain unless I get caught'.

is that about right?

[edit] To clarify, i didn't mean to imply Catalpa1 was planning on exploiting this, i was just being cynical, sorry [/edit]

Catalpa1

It seems like the OPs post can be summarised as:
'I've noticed that if i commit fraud, i'll have a financial gain unless I get caught'.

is that about right?

Absolutley NOT BUT if this was meant to eliminate debt hopping which it was and ULTIMATELY drive down prices it wont work. I have no doubt this is already happening, equally I have no doubt that CER snd the utilities involved will come out with great press releases BUT will then say at year end their bad debt provision has increase and sorry we cant drop our price in fact we have to increase them.
I dont have an answer for this. In the age of Contact centres If I ring up and say I am Fernando Torres no one will question it. Just highlighting another potential Regulatory "fix" which wont work. We saw enough of them with the banks

Ste.phen

Catalpa1 wrote: »

Absolutley NOT BUT if this was meant to eliminate debt hopping which it was and ULTIMATELY drive down prices it wont work. I have no doubt this is already happening, equally I have no doubt that CER snd the utilities involved will come out with great press releases BUT will then say at year end their bad debt provision has increase and sorry we cant drop our price in fact we have to increase them.
I dont have an answer for this. In the age of Contact centres If I ring up and say I am Fernando Torres no one will question it. Just highlighting another potential Regulatory "fix" which wont work. We saw enough of them with the banks

I wasn't suggesting you were planning on committing such fraud, but there's loopholes in any implemented system as you've rightly pointed out, and I don't think anyone has come up with a reliable way to avoid such bad debts, especially as you point out that they have no way to prove or disprove any information given to them over the phone as we don't have any sort of national ID or address registration system

dudara

To be honest, I don't see a Consumer Issue here. This is just a thread that points out loopholes in the system

Closed accordingly.

dudara