Alinta Energy audit findings

Key audit results 2018–19

1. Alinta Energy could not show us they obtained a customer’s consent over the phone before switching the customer to their plan.
2. Alinta Energy could not show us they had consistently trained their marketing representatives.
3. Alinta Energy could not show us they had consistently identified customers eligible for payment plans and if they had consistently assessed customers’ capacity to pay before placing them on a plan.

Recommended actions

We looked into the causes of these findings and recommended that Alinta Energy:

• Require the marketing representative to undergo refresher compliance training on obtaining explicit informed consent and recording it.
• Have better oversight over the external marketing agencies they engage and regularly monitor the timely completion of training by all marketing representatives.
• Improve their record keeping of communications with customers receiving financial support. 

Since this audit, we have also updated your rights if you have difficulty paying your bills and put in place more stringent rules on keeping communication records. 

Next steps

We continue to closely monitor Alinta Energy’s compliance and can take a range of compliance and enforcement actions in response to these audit findings.

Alinta Energy will be audited on their compliance with the new Payment Difficulty Framework in January 2020. 

Read more about our Compliance and Enforcement approach and priorities.

Auditor: BDO Australia
Audit period: 1 August 2017 and 30 June 2018
Audit history: This was their third audit since 2016 which followed up on past audit findings.