The following comment was sent to me today by “Nate”:

I believe all of you need to sit back and think about your complaints.

Firstly, if you have been billed for the wrong address, this is a clerical error and is usually resolved quickly as I have experienced the same issue. Patience is a quality that the creator of this website should look at employing. Did you get disconnected? Did it affect your credit at all? The answer to this would be no, therefore a more reasonable person would understand people make errors.

Secondly, if you haven’t received a bill for some time, WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU COMPLAIN?????? Is there something wrong with you? If you had any sense at all, you would put money aside based on your average cost per quarter, and I know for a fact that if AGL haven’t issued a bill for 1 year, they are obliged to give you 1 YEAR to pay it off.

Thirdly, why is it AGL’s responsibility to chase people who DON’T PAY THEIR BILLS?? It is your responsibility to ensure your bills are paid and if you don’t pay them for a SUBSTANTIAL amount of time, the details are passed onto a collection agency. If you FORGOT to pay your last bill, how is AGL at fault??

I would like to summarise by saying there are much more important things to worry about than your gas and electricity bills. If this is what consumes your thoughts, then you all need to have serious think about the quality of your lives…

Now, I actually agree with some of what Nate is saying here. If you forgot to pay your bill, it is your responsibility, not the suppliers. I also understand clerical errors and believe that I was quite reasonable about it for 9 months.

What I do have a problem with is when there seems to be a systemic lack of accountability on behalf of AGL to many of their customers.

• If I have been incorrectly charged for the wrong meter for several months, I should be able to get a statement of payments and charges incurred during that period, but AGL will not do this.
• If I make a payment, it should be credited to the correct account, but it isn’t.
• If I spend 15 minutes waiting to have my call answered, explain my situation, then get transferred, explain again, get transferred again, explain again, and then ask for something in writing reflecting what they have promised me on the phone, I don’t think this is unreasonable, but they won’t do this.
• If I call a further time to chase on on action that is supposed to have happened, I don’t expect to explain myself all over again, but they need me to.
• If they send me 4 different bills on the same day with 4 different amounts, how do I know what I owe them?
• If I don’t feel comfortable sending more money their way because of all of these problems, I don’t expect disconnection notices, and yet they arrive in my letterbox.
• If I request to change electricity retailers, I don’t expect to continue to be billed by AGL and not be changed over at all, and yet I am.

Nate, if you’ve had nothing but great service and support from AGL, I envy you. It’s pretty blinkered to dismiss our complaints based on your own experiences though. In general, we want to pay for services we’ve received, and want to have a positive relationship with our suppliers. If they don’t come up to scratch however, we have a right to complain, and since AGL doesn’t seem to be listening, maybe we can save someone else the pain we’ve gone through.

I’ve learned things by having this website, and maybe other people have too. Maybe they’ve learned they actually have a choice as to who their retailer is. Maybe they’ve learned there are legal limits to backcharging by utilities.

AGL has the lowest customer satisfaction levels of any retailer as of March this year. According to the Energy and Water Ombudsman of Victoria, over $1.1 million of adjustments and waivers were made by utilities in the second half of last year to resolve customer complaints, of which there were 16,762 in Victoria alone. This isn’t just an isolated case of a few haters out to get a company. This is a big problem affecting thousands. So to anyone else that thinks we’re just a few whiners, I suggest you sit back and think about that.