Simply Energy audit findings

Key Audit results 2018–19

1. Simply Energy could not show us they had consistently obtained customers’ consent over the phone before switching customers to their plan. 
2. Simply Energy had quality issues regarding their sales calls but did not report the potential breaches to us. 
3. The audit also covered training of marketing representatives but did not find any issues.

Recommended actions

We looked into the causes of these findings and recommended that Simply Energy: 

• Update their sales call process to ensure consent is recorded before pausing the recording to obtain customers’ personal payment details.
• Further review its quality assurance results for potential breaches and reminded them that any potential breaches must be reported in accordance with our Compliance and Performance Reporting Guideline.

Next steps

We recently issued $300,000 in penalties to Simply Energy for allegedly switching 15 customers without obtaining consent during the audit period, including one case where the error wasn’t fixed for five months (read more here). We also penalised Simply Energy in November 2018 for switching a customer who could not give consent properly because they had a brain injury (read more here). 

We continue to closely monitor Simply Energy’s compliance and can take a range of compliance and enforcement actions in response to these audit findings. 

Simply Energy will be audited in January 2020 on a range of new rules increasing customers’ rights to information on their energy bills, financial support to pay bills, and clear and comparable marketing information. 

Read more about our Compliance and Enforcement approach and priorities.

Auditor: Ernst & Young
Audit period: 1 March – 30 November 2018 
Audit history: This was their third audit since 2016 which followed up on past audit findings.