Power bill rules tweaked in favour of consumers
Tuesday, 3 March 2026
Electricity companies will need to check once a year whether their customers are on the best plan they offer and won’t usually be able to charge them for billing mistakes dating back more than six months.
Power companies will also need to provide a unique code for each of their power plans to make it easier for consumers to use price comparison services to see if they could get cheaper prices elsewhere.
The new rules, agreed by the Electricity Authority, will come into effect at the end of October and follow Genesis and Meridian raising their prices for hundreds of thousands of customers.
But in one win for electricity retailers, the regulator has shelved the idea of forcing power firms to let customers trial so-called “time-of-use plans” that offer different prices at different times of the day, “risk-free” for three months, so customers would not lose out if the plans resulted in them paying more for power.
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There will be some exceptions to the rule that power firms can’t bill residential customers and small businesses for errors going back more than six months, for example if retailers reasonably believed a customer had tampered with, or block access to, a meter.
Power firms will not be able to charge customers a “termination fee” if they are switching between plans that they offer.
Electricity Authority chief executive Sarah Gillies said the rules would strengthen retail competition and “empower consumers with clearer information”.
Utility Disputes, the statutory body empowered to handle complaints about utilities, welcomed the changes, and in particular the limitation period on back-billing, which it had lobbied for and which it said would reduce bill shocks.
“Consumers are often unaware that their bills have been based on estimates, leaving them blindsided when a large catch-up bill arrives,” commissioner Neil Mallon said.
“We have seen cases where businesses have been hit with back bills of $75,000 or more, and attempts to debit the full amount from a customer’s account in one go without any warning or discussion.”