Southpower

Press, 21 August 1989, Page 12

Southpower

Sir,—One of the most original deterrents to customers’ queries, let alone complaints, is the recurring note appearing on Southpower monthly electricity accounts, which apologises for inability to service incoming telephone calls. My question to Southpower management is to ask how the DMI unit cost could have possibly increased from 6.0330 c per unit to 8.251 c per unit — a mere increase of 36.75 per cent in two years! If this is the cost of monopoly control, let us have deregulation any day. — Yours, etc., J. B. BUXTON. August 10, 1989.

[The commercial manager of Southpower, Mr P. B. Shepard, replies: “We apologise for the inadequacy of our telephone system over the last month or so. We felt that the note on the accounts was a small, but appropriate, courtesy to our customers. With the recent installation of a new and bigger exchange we believe that these problems are now beginning to come right. Mr Buxton will no doubt be pleased to know that the apology on our accounts has been discontinued from today. The unit cost increases benefiting the M.E.D. since April 1, 1987, total, in fact, approximately 4 per cent up until the present. On October 1, 1987, a restructuring of the tariff was carried out to remove the late payment penalty, and achieve true discount for prompt payment This resulted in an apparent tariff increase from 6.033 c per unit to 6.703 per unit but did not in fact alter customer costs at all. On April 1, 1988, a 13 per cent increase resulted from an increase of 9 per cent by Electricorp in the bulk supply tariff. This brought the M.E.D. t|e 4 per cent rise

referred to above, and raised the DMI tariff to 7.758 c per unit (GST inclusive). On October 1, 1988, following pressure to address the problem of cross-subsi-disation of the domestic tariff by industry, the M.E.D. raised the domestic tariff by 4 per cent and reduced the non-domestic tariff by 6.4 per cent. This brought domestic to 8.068 c per unit. The latest GST increase then raised this to the current 8.251 c per unit. We understand Mr Buxton’s concerns, but trust he can appreciate that the M.E.D. (now Southpower), has made only modest inroads on the customer’s purse over the period concerned. It should be noted that Southpower’s domestic customers pay an average (smoothed over summer and winter) of $2.50 per day for power covering all heating, cooking, washing, lighting, refrigeration, etc., and this has to be extremely good value by any standards.”]