Natural Gas
OEB Fines Enbridge
Ontario Energy Board accepts Assurance of Voluntary Compliance from Enbridge Gas Inc.
At CES, working with Enbridge is a huge part of our role and responsibility as energy account managers. We rely on meter reads from Enbridge, as the rate-regulated gas distributor, for our customers for many difference reasons. When data is delayed, or not accurate, this can be very impactful to our business and that of our customers.
At points, the amount of involvement and time required to rectify meter reads by our operations team, account managers and back-end staff can be extensive. Ultimately, data that is inaccurate or delayed can impact our customers in many ways.
The most significant part of poor meter readings is inaccurate billing, from Enbridge, to the customers. We have seen multiple situations where customers have received large, back dated, billing for “estimates versus actual” readings. This makes budgeting extremely difficult and results in uncertainty on what should be consistent billing.
It also drastically affects cash flows and operations where tight cash management is a strict requirement.
As part of our due diligence, we would like to share a public article released stating the ‘The Ontario Energy Board (OEB) has accepted an Assurance of Voluntary Compliance (AVC) from Enbridge Gas Inc. (Enbridge).’
An AVC follows a review by the OEB of Enbridge’s performance against certain customer service quality requirements (SQR) set out in the OEB’s Gas Distribution Access Rule (GDAR).
The OEB initiated its review in mid-2021 because of a number of complaints about Enbridge’s meter reading and estimated billing activities and its call centre wait times. This resulted in, under the terms of this AVC, Enbridge paying an administrative monetary penalty of $250,000.
For more information, we encourage you to read the full article in detail:
Additional Information and Resources:
Read the Assurance of Voluntary Compliance - EB-2022-0188:
Learn about the OEB’s Compliance and Enforcement Process:
https://www.oeb.ca/regulatory-rules-and-documents/compliance-and-enforcement-processes
