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The Enbridge story continues! After my complaint to the Ontario Energy Board and follow-up letter, I have received a response from the OEB:

The following summarizes my review of your Enbridge Gas complaint.

We confirmed that your natural gas bills have been reverted to regular mail and Enbridge apologized to you for the delay with responding.

Enbridge made a business decision to switch to eBilling and automatically enrolled customers who accessed My Account online services. They are trying to reduce their carbon footprint and keep gas rates low for their customers. While we appreciate how frustrating and time consuming this experience has been, Enbridge assured the OEB they have discontinued switching their customers to eBilling without consent.

The OEB closely monitors these types of complaints and uses them to identify trends, improper practices or procedures; to help us recommend policy, and procedure changes a company should make.

Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.

… to which I have responded:

Thank you for your note.

I am puzzled as to why you find it necessary to confirm “that your natural gas bills have been reverted to regular mail and Enbridge apologized to you for the delay with responding.” I advised you of this on page 2 of my letter of 2019-12-24 and Enbridge’s confirmation of this was included in my letter of 2020-1-6. This fact is not at issue. I am not complaining about the mere fact of the original unilateral change to my billing preference; my complaint is about being lied to and about the company’s deliberately poor process for reinstatement.

I was actually lied to by a customer service representative when I attempted to follow the company’s instructions for reverting my billing preference; it is entirely possible that this lie was not a mistake but was actually a deliberate policy of the company. Please let me know why this aspect of my complaint (specified on page 1 of my letter of 2019-12-24 and pages 2-3 of my 2020-1-6 letter) has not been addressed.

In fact, your note does not address my complaint at all, which rests on violations of the Ontario Energy Board’s Consumer Charter and Enbridge’s own Conditions of Service, as noted prominently in both my letters. Please advise why my complaint has not been addressed.

I understand from your note that “Enbridge assured the OEB they have discontinued switching their customers to eBilling without consent”, which is of some interest. I would appreciate learning whether this is a formal “Assurance of Voluntary Compliance” as described at https://www.oeb.ca/industry/rules-codes-and-requirements/compliance-and-enforcement-processes or whether this assurance is merely another transient corporate policy.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 16th, 2020 at 7:36 pm and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.