Claim: Texas Retail Providers Won't Tell Customer Per kWh Price Until Sign Up
January 27,2020
The Dallas Morning News watchdog Dave Lieber, in a column counseling Arizona against adopting retail electric choice, quotes from a reader submission who claims that several Texas retail electric providers will not tell the customer the per kWh rate until signing up.
Lieber quotes the reader as stating, "I have checked with over 20 companies, and some of them won’t tell you how much you’ll be paying per kilowatt hour until you sign up."
It was not clear how the reader was reviewing various products.
However, if the products were being reviewed via a REP's website, the REP, by PUC rule, must include the Electricity Facts Label for the product on the site, accessible prior to enrollment without the customer entering any customer-specific information. The EFL contains the average all-in per kWh rate at three usage levels.
The PUC's rules state, "Each REP that offers residential retail electric products for enrollment on its website shall prominently display the EFL for any products offered without a person having to enter any personal information other than zip code and information that allows determination of the type of offer the consumer wishes to review. Person-specific information shall not be required."
To the extent the customer was calling REPs for rates, the PUC's rules generally provide that, "All written, electronic, and oral communications, including advertising, websites, direct marketing materials, billing statements, TOSs, EFLs and YRACs distributed by a REP or aggregator shall be clear and not misleading, fraudulent, unfair, deceptive, or anti-competitive."
A CSR that discusses with a customer a specific electric offer and rate but refuses to disclose the per kWh rate that would be on the customer's EFL (later provided at enrollment) is arguably not "clear" and is rather "misleading" in contravention of the stated rule
It would appear protections already exist to address the reader's problem as described in the column
However, the reader may have encountered difficulty in obtaining a specific set of per kWh rates, not because of REP malfeasance (as suggested), but because of logistics or, in fact, REPs' desire to avoid misleading information
As stated, the EFL provides an average per kWh at three stated usage levels (such as 1,000 kWh)
Of course, this doesn't provide the customer with a month-specific or customer-specific per kWh rate, as such rates will typically by usage, depending on the product (even under fixed rate plans with no usage tiers, because of flat TDU charges)
However, a REP can't provide the customer with a customer-specific future per kWh for a new product, since the customer's usage is not known ahead of time. The EFL provides the per kWh rate for different usage levels to address this
To the extent the customer is asking REPs for what the per kWh rate would have been under their new product for the customer's past monthly usage, a REP may wisely be wary of providing such information to the customer. Especially for plans whose per kWh rate will vary greatly with usage (tiered plans, etc.), past performance is not indicative of future results. A REP will not want to expose itself to claims of misleading the customer by telling the customer what the per kWh rate would have been in a prior month if the customer had been on the new plan, because the customer may assume that this specific rate will be the per kWh going forward. We can imagine customer anger if they sign up for a usage-based plan, and the REP, at the customer's request, informs them of a low per kWh rate for a shadow-billed prior month that happens to be low usage, only for the customer to have higher usage in the first month on the new plan, which increases the price per kWh. Pundits would breathlessly wonder why a REP gave the customer an outdated per kWh rate when the REP knew it was based on old usage and, therefore, meaningless. Accordingly, wise REPs will limit their disclosures to the standard usage levels on the EFL
Aside from Lieber's sharing of this reader experience, Lieber's column warns Arizona against any adoption of electric choice, citing criticisms previously covered by Lieber