This article discusses recent penalties the Pennsylvania PUC has imposed on Clearview, an energy supplier in Pennsylvania. According to the information here reported, Clearview's third-party door-to-door sales have unlawfully switched customers to Clearview, in some cases even without customer authorization. The PUC's investigation has also incurred that Clearview's agents were not allowed to engage in door-to-door sales at the time the switches occurred, a further violation of the energy supplier-marketing regulations.
Such action and sanctions, which is relatively minor for an energy suppliers, call into question the nature of regulatory practices imposed on energy suppliers. In other words, we should call for more regulation of the energy market - particularly when it means protecting customers who may be well unaware of such deceptive actions. Additionally, this incident also sheds light on why some communities distrust suppliers or switching to energy renewables; if something of the sort happened to a neighbor, they'd likely report badly on the renewable energy suppliers and, with strong neighborhood ties, many would distrust the suppliers all at once. Similar attitudes have been reporting by community research, even among investigations done by project members in this team, but in reports on community projects and energy transitions.
Paul Ring, "Retail Energy Supplier To Pay $59,000 Under Settlement With PUC Staff ", contributed by Briana Leone, The Energy Rights Project, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 28 May 2021, accessed 26 April 2024. https://energyrights.info/content/retail-energy-supplier-pay-59000-under-settlement-puc-staff
Critical Commentary
This article discusses recent penalties the Pennsylvania PUC has imposed on Clearview, an energy supplier in Pennsylvania. According to the information here reported, Clearview's third-party door-to-door sales have unlawfully switched customers to Clearview, in some cases even without customer authorization. The PUC's investigation has also incurred that Clearview's agents were not allowed to engage in door-to-door sales at the time the switches occurred, a further violation of the energy supplier-marketing regulations.
Such action and sanctions, which is relatively minor for an energy suppliers, call into question the nature of regulatory practices imposed on energy suppliers. In other words, we should call for more regulation of the energy market - particularly when it means protecting customers who may be well unaware of such deceptive actions. Additionally, this incident also sheds light on why some communities distrust suppliers or switching to energy renewables; if something of the sort happened to a neighbor, they'd likely report badly on the renewable energy suppliers and, with strong neighborhood ties, many would distrust the suppliers all at once. Similar attitudes have been reporting by community research, even among investigations done by project members in this team, but in reports on community projects and energy transitions.