Belgian State Secretary for Consumer Protection Eva De Bleeker is calling seven energy suppliers to task following numerous complaints about them from customers, she announced on Sunday.
This year, the Federal Public Service (FPS) for Economy has already received 1,634 reports on seven different suppliers, mainly about their lack of transparency and accessibility. Therefore, the economic inspectorate has launched an investigation against them, De Bleeker said on VRT's 'De Zevende Dag' programme on Sunday.
"Fix it, or legal action will follow," she told the suppliers, specifying that legal action could come in the form of fines, up to €80,000 per case on an infringement, or even a subpoena.
"I have repeatedly sat down with the energy suppliers to talk, but it does not seem to help. My patience is really running out," De Bleeker said. "The companies get one more week, and then I want to see a roadmap, showing how they are going to tackle this. If that does not come, I will take other steps myself."
De Bleeker denounced the attitude of the energy companies involved – both large and smaller players. "Some are taking steps in the right direction, others are not. They cannot keep hiding behind the argument that we are in a crisis. I really want to see solutions."
Energy suppliers do not seem to realise how insecure it makes consumers when they have to wait a long time for their final bill, or if they have no idea how their advances are calculated, she explained.
Additionally, De Bleeker is prepared to go even further and take the companies to court if the fines do not achieve anything. "If these threats are not enough, we must take it further. And if we have to, I will even go to stricter legislation, if dialogue really does not work anymore."
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In the meantime, the Federation of Belgian energy suppliers Febeg stated that they will do their best to come up with solutions. "Of course, I do not know exactly what was asked of each supplier, but as an industry, we will see what is possible," said director-general Marc Van Den Bosch.
There have been plenty of attempts to improve customer services to increase accessibility, but this is not easy, he said. "The number of calls has doubled or tripled, sometimes even quadrupled in peak periods. A few hundred people have already been hired in the call centres, but 1,100 vacancies were still open last week. The labour market tightness there is very high."
Van Den Bosch admitted that transparency about advance payments could also be better, but added that you cannot just share all information about that either. "You cannot exchange competition-sensitive information between companies. The way things are organised internally, those are matters peculiar to an energy supplier."
