Texas Consumer Groups Seek More Granular Retail Electric Complaint Data

Texas Legal Services Center and the Texas Ratepayers Organization to Save Energy requested that the Public Utility Commission of Texas publish more granular complaint data regarding retail electric providers.

TLSC and Texas ROSE's comments were filed in response to the Commission's posting of its 2013 summary of complaints.

"The type of consumer complaints reported in the 2013 summary should be more granular," TLSC and Texas ROSE said. "Some categories such as slamming are narrow enough to be meaningful but most if not all of the other categories portrayed are too general to provide meaningful information to consumers. For instance, a billing complaint can range from incorrect billing to illegal fees to charges not caused by the consumer. Where would a complaint that a REP failed to honor a timely requested rescission of a contract for services be in the current graph presentation? Where does deceptive marketing fit within these broad categories. The graphs portrayed do not provide definitions identifying the nature of complaints to be found within the broad categories currently portrayed. Without more granularity consumers are not able to ascertain the problems consumers are having with the retail electric market."

Additionally, the consumer groups said that the PUC FY2013 Enforcement Activity Report should be more granular in identifying the respective violations listed. "One of the violations listed in this report is 'customer protection rules.' This term is too broad to provide meaningful information. The dockets related to the 'customer protection rule' violations involved issues ranging from wrongfully charging a fee for customer mailing of payments to deceptive marketing to selling electricity without a certificate. Without a more granular identification of the retail electric company activities that are violating the law electric retail customers cannot make informed choices in the retail electric market," the groups said.

Furthermore, TLSC and Texas ROSE said that the FY2013 summaries of consumer complaints and enforcement actions should break out the data into prepaid and postpaid products. Complaint and enforcement data should separate out those data that relate to residential customers, the groups added.

Docket 42211