OEB to review customer billing practices and performance policy

OEB billing accuracy drives better customer satisfaction as the Ontario Energy Board updates billing practices for electricity and natural gas distributors, leveraging smart meters, timely usage data, e-billing options, and a performance scorecard.

The Ontario Energy Board, or OEB, is increasingly focused on ensuring customers are well served by their distributors and receive appropriate value for the price they pay. To this end, the Board is currently pursuing a number of initiatives to improve the customer’s bill and make it more effective in helping households and small businesses manage their energy costs.

Timely and accurate billing by electricity and natural gas distributors is essential to customer satisfaction. As such, the Board wants to ensure that billing practices by all distributors in Ontario align with customer service measures that meet those customer needs and expectations as well as their preferences for more frequent updates on their energy use.

OEB’s goal is to give more customers, especially Ontario electricity consumers a better understanding of their energy consumption so that they can better manage that consumption and control their costs. OEB intends to consider policies related to billing practices for all regulated natural gas and electricity distributors, including customer service code amendments to help meet these objectives. The OEB is also in the process of developing a measure for billing accuracy that would be included on each electricity distributor’s performance scorecard, as established by the Board earlier this year.

By undertaking this initiative, the OEB expects to take advantage of the recent upgrades to the electricity system and investments in smart meters, with the Smart Metering transition helping to provide additional benefits for customers. This will result in more accurate bills for consumers and receipt of electricity usage information based on actual meter readings, addressing issues noted in billing complaints in a more timely and convenient manner. The Board will also review the availability of e-billing as an option for customers.

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