A revised Electricity Supply Code is set to tighten restrictions on consumers who repeatedly change electricity providers while leaving unpaid bills behind, allowing suppliers to block some customer transfers and refuse contracts to applicants with a history of overdue debts.
The changes create a two-tier system designed to limit supplier switching by persistent debtors and allow electricity companies to reject new customers with a record of unpaid obligations.
Under the revised framework, a consumer will be blocked from changing provider if an order has already been issued to deactivate the electricity meter because of overdue debts or if the customer has active delinquency flags from at least three different suppliers.
Those flags are recorded in a database for nonpaying customers modeled on the banking sector’s credit-monitoring system.
The new rules also permit a supplier to refuse a contract with a prospective customer in certain cases.
