The Pennsylvania PUC has brought sanctions against Eligo Energy for using deceptive marketing materials between January 2019 and March 2020. Eligo Energy sent out mailers with 'Final Notice' on customers' electric bills, even when seasonal moratoriums were in place or when there was no cause for final notices to be sent out. Other mailers even had 'rate change' printed of them. These series of measures had customers in the area switch to Eligo Energy but, Eligo's defense was that it saved customers between $87,000 and $246,000 over what they would have been paying to previous suppliers. Besides the action, Eligo has promised to ensure something of the like will not happen again by having marketing materials be overseen by Eligo's legal department.
While the settlement is reassuring and Eligo has promised to better oversee marketing practices, having internal monitoring does not 100% ensure that Eligo will not engage in deceitful practices again in the future. Additionally, these practices truly call into question how much energy suppliers value their customers and whether acts like these contribute to further mistrust in energy suppliers on the part of the customers.
Paul Ring, "PUC Issues For Public Comment Settlement Under Which Retail Supplier Would Pay $188,000", contributed by Briana Leone, The Energy Rights Project, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 28 May 2021, accessed 19 April 2024. https://energyrights.info/content/puc-issues-public-comment-settlement-under-which-retail-supplier-would-pay-188000
Critical Commentary
The Pennsylvania PUC has brought sanctions against Eligo Energy for using deceptive marketing materials between January 2019 and March 2020. Eligo Energy sent out mailers with 'Final Notice' on customers' electric bills, even when seasonal moratoriums were in place or when there was no cause for final notices to be sent out. Other mailers even had 'rate change' printed of them. These series of measures had customers in the area switch to Eligo Energy but, Eligo's defense was that it saved customers between $87,000 and $246,000 over what they would have been paying to previous suppliers. Besides the action, Eligo has promised to ensure something of the like will not happen again by having marketing materials be overseen by Eligo's legal department.
While the settlement is reassuring and Eligo has promised to better oversee marketing practices, having internal monitoring does not 100% ensure that Eligo will not engage in deceitful practices again in the future. Additionally, these practices truly call into question how much energy suppliers value their customers and whether acts like these contribute to further mistrust in energy suppliers on the part of the customers.