Electricity bills: Increase in the number of justified complaints from the public

September 8, 2014   

After it was announced yesterday (Sunday) that the state's attempt to reach an agreement with the electricity company's workers' committee regarding reform in the electricity sector failed, the Electricity Authority announced today that in 2013 there was a significant increase in the number of justified complaints regarding electricity bills, the quality of distribution service, and electricity infrastructure.

No less than 38% of the complaints were found to be justified, an increase of 7% from last year. In contrast, there was a decrease in complaints about damage, illegal uses, reliability and quality of supply, and in the areas of renewable energy regulation.

In 2013, there was a 151% decrease in the number of complaints received by the Authority compared to 2012. However, the number of complaints received is still almost double that of 2009.

According to the report, this year the Israel Electric Company paid no less than 4.4 million shekels in compensation to consumers due to complaints that were found to be justified: 3.5 million shekels were paid for damage caused to electrical appliances, and the rest was mostly paid to consumers for editing of proactive skips that were not in accordance with the standards. Proactive skips are a situation in which the Israel Electric Company does not send meter readers to the building on its own initiative, and as a result, an assessment of the electricity consumption on site is made and bills are submitted for payment based on that. As a result of the Electricity Authority's stricter regulation for violations in this area, the amount of proactive skips decreased from 7.2% of all readings in 2012 (a total of 320 thousand proactive skips) and in 2013 it stood at only 1.6% (33,924 skips).

The Israel Electric Corporation responded: "The Israel Electric Corporation is proud that only 409 complaints were registered with the Electricity Authority last year out of 2.5 million customers to whom the company provides service, which is 0.036% of all the company's customers. There is no doubt that this figure reinforces the fact that we have been the first in the service for 17 years, according to a survey by the Geocartography Institute. The Israel Electric Corporation draws and will continue to draw lessons to improve service from each and every complaint and encourages the filing of complaints. The company provides customers with a variety of options for filing a complaint, by contacting the company's public complaints ombudsman, the website and the Facebook page. The company compensates customers in accordance with the standards set by the Electricity Authority. Every complaint that reaches the company is examined in depth and we attach great importance to this.".