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Draft Rules Drop Requirement For Affirmative Consent For Any Rate Change But Require Notice of Changes, Reinstate Permissibility of Voice Verification

July 27, 2015

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Copyright 2010-15 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Karen Abbott • kabbott@energychoicematters.com

A new draft of proposed changes to the electric and natural gas supplier rules in Maryland has dropped an earlier proposal that would have required affirmative consent for any rate change, and would continue to allow the use of voice verification for consent where required by law.

A December 2014 proposal would have required affirmative consent for any rate change, and subsequent Staff comments suggested Staff was seeking to eliminate the use of voice verification to obtain consent (click here for story).

The latest draft, under RM 54, eliminates the earlier proposal for affirmative consent for any rate change. Instead, the draft would require suppliers to send customers a notice of a change in their rate.

Specifically, when a customer’s rate changes, a supplier would be required to make available to a customer his or her rate for the next billing period as follows:

(1) The rate shall be made available at least twelve days prior to close of the customer’s billing period;

(2) The rate shall be made available in a clear, easy to access format prescribed by the supplier;

(3) The supplier shall promptly give the customer directions on how to access the rate:

        (a) at the time of enrollment;

        (b) when sending any notice as required in this Title;

        (c) upon request; or

        (d) if the supplier changes the directions for accessing the rate.

The draft would permit a supplier to provide an estimated rate for the customer’s next billing period. If the supplier provides an estimated rate for the customer, the supplier shall not use a rate for billing purposes that is higher than the estimate, the draft provides

Neither a supplier nor a customer would be allowed to limit or waive the rate change notice provisions.

The latest draft defines consent as included voice verification where permissible by law. Specifically, consent is defined as including:

(a) a written document with customer signature;

(b) an electronic document with electronic signature; or

(c) a voice recording only if the agreement is exempt under the Maryland Telephone Solicitations Act.

The new draft would require suppliers to use a contract summary form developed by the PSC, which, among other things, includes the statement that, "The supply price may not always provide a savings."

The latest draft would explicitly provide that a supplier is responsible for any fraudulent, deceptive or other unlawful marketing acts performed by its agent in the conduct of marketing or sales activities on behalf of a supplier.

The new draft would provide that a supplier may not permit a person to conduct door-to-door sales and marketing activities until it has obtained and reviewed a criminal history record from the Maryland Criminal Justice Information System and from every other state in which the person resided for the last 12 months.

During door-to-door sales, the sales agent would be required to state that he or she is not working for and is independent of the customer’s local distribution company

The draft states that a supplier shall provide the local distribution company with general, nonproprietary information about the door-to-door sales and marketing activity. The supplier shall provide this general information to the distribution company no later than the morning of the day that the sales and marketing activities begin.

For electricity, the draft would require a utility to process an electronic enrollment or drop from a supplier to be effective within five days after receipt of the electronic transaction.

The draft would codify existing PSC policy that a cancellation fee is not considered a commodity and is not subject to purchase as a receivable by the utility, as well as existing policy that suppliers shall submit open offers to the Commission’s website according to instructions provided by the Commission.

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