On 23 December COTA Australia and the Energy Advocates provided feedback to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) to inform its review of the Retail guidelines (currently four enforceable AER guidelines) and the merging of these into a single, easy-to-use document.
The review invited energy consumers to share their understanding of how the AER can improve consumers’ engagement with the energy market by:
• improving the industry’s regulatory frameworks
• simplifying energy retail communications and ensuring retail customers are receiving clear, useful and timely information that:
– better positions them to understand and manage the energy market’s increasing complexity
– makes it easier for them to access a better offer
• improving price transparency
• contributing to the development of new rules that would better protect customers experiencing payment difficulty, as well as provide more simplified pathways for those who currently find engagement in the energy market highly challenging.