EDP did not join in the recent electricity supply auction as it did not want to "pay commissions to third parties."
In response to DECO’s recent auction, which resulted in the Endesa company being selected as the chosen supplier for 600,000 registered customers, EDP has now launched a campaign of its own with discounted energy costs to spoil and disrupt the work that DECO has done.
EDP's new campaigns, "Casa Total Click" and "Casa Click" offer a discount offer of 10% on gas and 5% for electricity.
"We had planned long ago to have a marketing campaign in the first half of the year," says the president of EDP Comercial Miguel Stilwell.
The Endesa deal with DECO is to supply at a 5% discount, spookily the same discount percentage that EDP is now offering in an unhelpful and confusing move which will have consumers worried over the price stability of this new, deregulated market.
Stilwel contined that "It is a proposal from EDP that is different to those in the past" because as the market evolves "the complexity of the proposals will also increase." This seems true as the EDP offer runs until June 30th, and is only on the Internet, thus effectively barring many elderly customers who are struggling by on reducing pensions.
Confirming that EDP did not want to enter the earlier auction because it did not want to "pay commissions to third parties," Miguel Stilwell added that EDP’s discount offer is only possible because the company has streamlined the relationship with the customer, and wants to pass on the savings achieved from a paperless system, online only through energia.edp.pt
The EDP offer also is exempt from the quarterly price hikes imposed by the regulator as part of the transition to the full deregulation of the market.
The EDP contract does not include any penalty clauses, and the consumer is free to switch to another supplier in the market, just like the DECO offer.
The company said that "the launch of new pricing offers is part of the strategy defined by the company in giving options that allow greater choice to customers of electricity and natural gas."
In fact EDP has waited until the DECO auction was over and then pounced in a move aimed deliberately to devalue the auction process and cause the maximum possible disruption. The EDP pricing structure is exactly the same as the Endesa offer and dark mutterings about commission payments will do nothing to changes many minds that EDP has never had its customers’ interests as even a small part its core mission.
DECO and Endesa have yet to advise its 600,000 potential customers of how to procede and sign up with the new supplier. This combination has now lost the competitive advantage that it had.
Welcome to deregulation.
