Competition investigates delays in changes to the regulated gas rate

The National Market and Competition Commission (CNMC) has today confirmed the opening of an informative file to marketers that offer the regulated gas rate due to the difficulties and delays that many consumers who have requested to switch to the rate are encountering.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
25 October 2022 Tuesday 05:43
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Competition investigates delays in changes to the regulated gas rate

The National Market and Competition Commission (CNMC) has today confirmed the opening of an informative file to marketers that offer the regulated gas rate due to the difficulties and delays that many consumers who have requested to switch to the rate are encountering. of last resort (TUR), which is the cheapest. The problems detected coincide with the avalanche of requests that these companies have received in recent weeks.

According to CNMC sources, an information request has been sent to the four regulated marketers that offer the TUR rate to find out if they are reinforcing their customer service systems in the face of the avalanche of change requests, as well as the waiting times to attend to these demands. However, they clarify that an informative file does not mean that a sanction ends up being imposed, since this would only happen if the CNMC detected that any of these companies "is violating the regulations".

For her part, the Secretary of State for Energy, Sara Aagesen, added that the Government does not rule out taking measures in this regard. In an interview with RNE's Las Mañanas, she asked energy companies to make an effort to make the best offers available to all consumers and to be agile in processing any request. In this sense, he detailed that, at the gates of winter, many consumers are opting for the TUR 1, 2 and 3 rates for natural gas, "a safer and less volatile rate", especially after the Government has limited their uploads by law. To this is added the creation of a TUR rate for the boilers of neighboring communities, which would have contributed to the collapse of the customer service of the marketers.

Last week the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU) denounced the difficulties encountered by many users who want to switch to the gas rate of last resort, to which one in five users are covered. "Both in social networks and in forums and in our own OCU consultancy we have received complaints about it," said the organization. Likewise, he specified that some regulated marketers were making it difficult to access the TUR rate both in telephone and online contracting.

This rate can only be contracted in certain marketers, which are Baser (Total Energies Group), Regulated Gas Marketer

Specifically, the organization denounced that the customer services of these companies either did not answer calls from consumers within a reasonable waiting time (up to 30 minutes), or else the call ended up being cut off during the wait. In some cases, in addition, the hiring must be done online, a process that "is not easy either," he asserts.