a blog

Well, it was good that the wait is over. For nearly a week or so since we’ve made the decision to switch from Meridian Energy to PowerShop – the online power company in New Zealand.

Many other people that I know have made the switch and they have been bragging out the savings and the ease of use and freedom to choose different pricing pack for their power usage.

The experience of changing over to PowerShop was great to start, it is easy to to apply online, and they even have a calculator to guesstimate how much you could be saving if you switch over to PowerShop.

Sure enough (by PowerShop’s advice) that the former power company will call up and try to “offer” a better deal at the 11th hour. I got a call from Meridian Energy, trying to offer me a blanket 20% discount if I stay with them, poor woman on the phone (obviously a staff member of their customer retention team) had to deal with my questions of why only at the very last hour that they willing to offer a better deal to retend their existing customers from moving away, and why not pre-emptively offer a better deal for someone that they called “valued customer for over decade” – if I am valued, why didn’t they offer me great deal 6 months ago, or a year ago or whatever…

Anyhow, paid the last Meridian Energy bills (yes, they sent out two, one for the month prior PowerShop got transfer ‘paper’, then another for ‘final account’.) Then earlier this week, I got the email from PowerShop that I can start shop with them. Yay!

However, it isn’t fully rainbow though… there was some transfer confusion from previous power company to PowerShop. You see, the power usage was only an estimation when Meridian Energy provided to PowerShop, act upon PowerShop’s recommendation, I went and provide the actual meter readings which ultimately start a snowball effect of “missing units”.

Thankfully to wonderful superb staff at PowerShop, that they’re monitoring and looking into this issue and I should hear back from them tomorrow or in next few days with their finding.

What will happen next? Well I’d be “out of units” within next few hours but I won’t be out of power. Ever since the “mistake” of Mercury Energy for cutting off one of their customer’s power, the power companies in NZ are now required to maintain the availability of power to their customers, and all customers are to sign a “dependency” declaration to ensure the power is always available.

I’m looking forward to more saving, but for the meantime, I’ll wait and see what PowerShop can report back to me in regards to my transfer…