Words by Melanie Davis, Customer Experience Manager.
At WINconnect, we believe in playing fair and doing the right thing. Not only does doing the right thing make us feel good, it just makes good business sense. Gone are the days where companies could sweep wrongdoings under the rug. Scrutiny from customers and stakeholders alike have meant a shift to openness, honesty and transparency. And we’re all for it!
As WINconnect’s Customer Experience Manager, I take great pride in knowing we put our customers first – meaning they’re ahead of the pack when it comes to service and experience. Particularly by providing our customers access to the best and fairest deals for their energy bills.
The Australian energy sector has been put under the microscope recently. More than any other consumer product, energy prices are confusing. They’ve previously been charged at all sorts of unclear ‘discounts’ off a mysterious base that no one quite understood.
To combat all the smoke and mirrors and to make pricing easier to navigate for customers, regulatory and legislative changes were introduced on 1 July 2019. This saw the introduction of greater pricing transparency measures, including the introduction of a Default Market Offer (DMO), a standard reference price from which all discounts must be made. This allows customers to compare apples with apples, to more easily compare energy plans across different providers. The DMO applies to consumers living in South Australia, New South Wales and South-East Queensland. A Victorian equivalent, called the Victorian Default Offer (VDO), has also been introduced.
Under the current legislation, Embedded Network service providers, like WINconnect, cannot charge more than the default offers in each jurisdiction. Our customers can have peace of mind knowing that the rates charged are competitive and not excessive.
We have always met the regulatory requirements, and when the DMO was introduced in 2019, we immediately passed it on to all our customers. But it goes beyond that for us. Beyond the regulatory requirements, we are committed to doing the right thing by our customers. Where the VDO is concerned, not only did we meet regulatory requirements, we preceded them.
The VDO was introduced in July 2019, but it was not mandatory for Embedded Network customers until September 2020. Despite this, we made the decision to make the VDO available to all our Victorian customers in July 2019, at the same time as traditional electricity customers.
At WINconnect, we always strive for our customers to come out on top! To us, that means racing ahead of the pack to provide exceptional service to all our customers; quickly addressing any issues or concerns customers may have, providing individualised and tailored service, consistently going above and beyond, and ensuring customers always have access to the best and fairest deal possible.