|
|
|
CONSUMER PROTECTION ADVISORY TASK FORCE
LIST OF TASK FORCE ISSUES
The following issues are among those that will be considered by the Consumer Protection Advisory Task Force. Additional issues may arise during the course of Task Force deliberations.
A. Consumer Protection Needs
All stakeholders in the electric industry will work in partnership to focus on the general consumer affairs concerns. The following suggests some, but not all of the areas the Task Force needs to be concerned about during and beyond the transition to competition:1
1. Bills and Billing Practices
Complaints and/or disputes will arise whether or not customers receive a bill for all aspects of unbundled service from the utility or two separate bills (one from the utility for regulated services and one from the unregulated supplier). Therefore, commodity/service prices must be fully disclosed in a simple and uniform manner in plain English and when appropriate, in a bilingual format. (Staff's Comment - break out issues)
2. Unfair Trade Practices, Marketing, Fraud and Antitrust Matters
Customers will need prohibitions and enforcement against unfair and deceptive practices by unregulated suppliers, brokers and aggregators, including slamming, excessive rates, over-billing, redlining false and misleading advertising and other marketing abuses that already exist in the telecommunications area.
3. Privacy
Consumers should be able to control the disclosure and use of their personal information and utility billing records. Currently, there appears to be no Federal law prohibiting the release of these records, nor is there a New Jersey statute to protect these records, as they relate to credit information or other personal information.
4. Credit and Collection Standards
All suppliers should engage in complete disclosure of credit and related pricing terms and approve credit applications based on non-discriminatory criteria. Compliance with all statutory credit and collection schemes should be enforced. Collection activities may need to be reviewed to accommodate the presence of multiple providers on the bill or the provision of multiple bills.
5. Non-Discriminatory Pricing
All suppliers must price their services on a non-discriminatory basis. Suppliers may not discriminate on the basis of factors such as income level, age, race, gender, ethnicity, geography and other discriminatory categories.
B. Consumer Education and Protection Mechanisms 2
1. Education
Consumers need reliable market information in order to be able to make informed choices about electric service contracts and consumption. Suppliers, brokers and aggregators should, at a minimum, be required to tell a customer his or her choices of services and options when asked. The Task Force will explore and develop recommended policies to insure that all consumers are educated and informed about their rights and responsibilities and act as a neutral source for market information. In this regard, the Task Force will explore the best mechanisms to collect, develop and disseminate information about prices, terms, conditions and qualities of service options, as well as the track records of the market participants. The Task Force must focus on promoting an understanding of the technical issues associated with electric power purchases and conservation programs in an effort to create educated consumers and to prevent disputes before they arise. To do so, the Task Force will develop a comprehensive plan which will:
The Task Force will create education materials and implement a plan to have government, industry and community groups distribute these materials at no cost to residential customers and in various languages so that it is widely available to the public.
2. Protection
To guard against identified and potential unscrupulous practices and to ensure that customers receive affordable quality electric service, the Task Force must work to develop safeguards like:
3. Environmental Disclosure
The BPU has indicated in its Final Report on electric industry restructuring that consumers would benefit from a requirement that all electricity suppliers participating in the competitive retail marketplace in New Jersey disclose the average level of air emissions from their electric generation portfolio. Environmental ratings could be affixed to the relative levels of emission portfolios.
In this manner, consumers could be provided with the information necessary to choose environmentally-sensitive suppliers, including those providing power from low-emitting generators or renewable power resources.
Vital to the implementation of such a labeling system is the resolution to several technical issues, to ensure that the information provided to consumers is meaningful and useful and, perhaps most important, can be reasonably verified to prevent against consumer fraud. These issues include:
The subcommittee, which would include representatives of Task Force members, as well as the DEP and environmental experts as deemed necessary, would examine these and other relevant questions for the purpose of making recommendations to the Task Force as to whether such an environmental disclosure system is feasible and, if so, how specifically it should be implemented.
Footnotes
1 Many of these issues are discussed in greater depth in the following sources: (1) Barbara R. Alexandar and the National Consumer Law Center, "Consumer Protection Proposals for Retail Electric Competition: Model Legislation and Regulations" (October 1996), a report prepared for Maine; (2) "Consumer Protection and Education in a Restructured Electric Industry," Prepared by the Direct Access Working Group in California in Response to the CPUC's Decision 96-03-022 in R.94-04-031, I. 94-04-032 (Oct. 30, 1996); and (3) Barbara R. Alexander, "The Consumer Protection Agenda in the Electric Restructuring Debate" (May 31, 1996), a report prepared for Legislative Energy Advisory Program. Back
About RPA
| Press Releases
| Annual Report
| E-mail Directory
| NewsLetter
| Search
New | Electric | Gas
| Telecommunications
| Water and Waste Water
| Links |
Archives