Hon Kate Doust questions the Minister for Energy regarding a Synergy review of rebate and concession applications, revealing errors affecting thousands of customers. The Minister assures that identified errors have been resolved, with some exceptions.

AnsweredQoN 4854Legislative Council
Asked
20 October 2011
Portfolio
Energy

QuestionView source ↗

I refer to Synergy’s review into the application of rebates and concessions to customer accounts which was delivered to the Minister in April, and ask -
(1) Will the Minister table this review?
(2) If no to (1), why not?
(3) What were the recommended actions arising from the report and what has not been completed to date?
(4) How many Synergy customers, by type of rebate, have been affected by this problem?
(5) Have all eligible Synergy customers now had rebates correctly applied, and is the Minister confident all anomalies have been found?

AnswerView source ↗

Answered
22 November 2011
Responded by
Minister for Energy
Response time
33 days
(1) No
(2) There is no official report resulting from the review, Synergy has briefed the Minister in relation to issues identified and progress of resolution on an ongoing basis through briefing notes.
(3) Synergy's review was focussed on identifying issues and resolving them expediently once they were identified. In all instances, where issues were identified, immediate actions were undertaken to resolve them. Synergy continues to monitor the application of rebates and concessions closely, and is confident these are being applied correctly in the vast majority of instances.
(4) Of the approximately 250,000 customers who are paid rebates through Synergy, the following numbers were affected by errors of over and underpayment:
Supply Charge Rebate: 13,068
Dependent Child Rebate: 10,550
Air Conditioning Rebate: 18
Late Fee Waiver: 55,068
Synergy notes that many customers are eligible for multiple rebates, thus the data above will contain duplicate and triplicate numbers of customers as they are counted per rebate. For instance, a customer affected by a supply charge rebate error could possibly also have been affected by a late fee waiver omission, thus would be counted in both categories.
(5) Synergy is confident that identified errors have been resolved and that all eligible customers have had their rebates and concessions correctly applied, with the exception of some inactive accounts and specific cases where Synergy is in the process of liaising with customers to rectify errors.
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