Energy Minister Michael Fallon today applauded SSE for pledging to end automatic contract rollovers and extend its back-billing commitment for small businesses, calling on other suppliers to follow suit.
SSE has announced that it will end automatic contract rollovers for small businesses in April 2014.* In a major challenge to all other suppliers in the sector, from April 2014 SSE will also extend its existing micro-business back-billing commitment to cover small business customers.
SSE has taken on board feedback from customers, government and stakeholder groups and is now consulting on a new approach to contract renewals and billing that better suits the needs of small businesses. As part of that process, SSE will be engaging in in-depth discussions with the Federation of Small Businesses, Consumer Futures and others in order to ensure that the changes being made will have the maximum possible benefit to customers. The full details will be finalised over the next few months and implemented in April 2014.
In 2012, SSE was the first supplier to introduce a back-billing commitment for “micro- businesses”, promising to accept full responsibility when a customer had been under-billed due to a genuine billing error and not to issue a ‘back bill’ to that micro-business for a period greater than twelve months. SSE now plans to extend that commitment to cover all of its small business customers from April 2014.
Kevin Greenhorn, Director of Business Supply, said: “We want to be the number one energy supplier for the small business sector, and that means responding to what customers want. Small businesses are run by busy people who focus their time on their companies. They have enough deadlines to meet without us giving them another one, so we’re ending automatic contract rollovers. They also shouldn’t have to pay for other people’s mistakes. That’s why we are raising the bar once more by pledging not to back-bill small businesses beyond 12 months where our error has led to the customer underpaying. We want to challenge other suppliers to follow our lead.”
Michael Fallon, Energy Minister, said: “Small businesses are leading the generation of ideas, the creation of new jobs and the shift towards a balanced economy. It’s vital that we do all we can to help them flourish, grow and keep running costs down.
“DECC and Number 10 have been working closely with energy companies to encourage action on automatic contract rollovers and on back-billing. I applaud SSE for listening to the nation’s small businesses. I hope that other energy suppliers will rapidly follow suit.”
*In line with Ofgem's modifications to the ‘micro-business’ definition as part of the Retail Market Review, from 26 August 2013 we will classify a customer as being a micro-business if it meets one of the following criteria:
Usage
Gas: Uses fewer than 293,000 kWh per year, or
Electricity: Uses fewer than 100,000 units per year, or
Size
Employs fewer than 10 employees (or their full time equivalent) and their annual turnover or balance sheet does not exceed €2 million.
SSE is extending this commitment to cover small business customers. SSE defines ‘small business’ as micro business customers (MBC) and single-site, non-half hourly metered customers.