Electricity supply difficulties

EWON can help with electricity supply difficulties and damage issues. For example, if you believe your supplier was responsible for damage to your property or household appliances, loss of food or any other loss caused by the supply of electricity.

We can investigate your complaint, review your compensation claim, try to negotiate between you and your supplier, provide advice and referral information.

Generally, we would expect you to have tried to sort out your issue with your electricity supplier first. Before contacting them, have a look at some of our tips for dealing with your supplier.

You can read more information about supply quality or download our factsheet on how we investigate damage claims.

The cases below provide two examples of how we have helped people with supply difficulties.

Case study: an outage of service

Mr J lives in a rural area and is accustomed to two or three planned power outages per year. His supplier would contact him about the outages, allowing him time to prepare and work around them. However, he found that a recent change of policy by the supplier meant that he would no longer be personally notified about planned outages.

He contacted his supplier to discuss the matter but was informed that the notification service was no longer part of their business operations. After several inconclusive discussions with the supplier, Mr J called EWON. EWON raised Mr J's concerns with the supplier. They explained that they advertised outages in the local newspaper because the area was too large for a letter drop and there were too many people to contact by telephone.

Following further consultation with EWON, the supplier agreed that their policy needed to be amended to incorporate advance warning of the outages to rural customers in similar situations to Mr J.

Case study: more bang for your buck

When Mr L's personal computer crashed he took it to a repairer who told him that the damage to his monitor had occurred due to a power surge. Mr L sent a claim to his supplier for the cost of a replacement monitor. Mr L's supplier denied the claim and said that because he could not be specific about the date and time of the power surge they could not give him any compensation.

Mr L contacted EWON asking for a review of his supplier's decision not to pay his claim. EWON contacted the supplier to access the relevant information relating to Mr L's claim. The supplier offered to compensate Mr L to the value of $400. Mr L felt that the offer did not cover the cost of a replacement monitor.

After further discussion Mr L's supplier agreed to pay the $650 claim. They then personally delivered a cheque for $650 and apologised for the delay and inconvenience.