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CMP Seeks Investigation of Liberty Power Over Alleged Marketing Violations
June 3, 2011
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Central Maine Power has requested that the Maine PUC investigate the actions of Liberty Power and issue a cease and desist order preventing Liberty Power from representing that they are in any way connected with CMP.
Liberty Power denied any violation, and said that an investigation is not necessary as it has addressed any perceived improprieties by one of its sales channels.
CMP alleged that, commencing on May 23, 2011, CMP began receiving complaints from customers related to phone calls received from an entity attempting to get customers to switch their electric supply service to Liberty Power.
"In some circumstances messages were left with customers, stating that it was CMP calling and it was imperative that customers call them back. In other cases where customers were reached directly, they were told that the entity calling was National Energy Group calling on behalf of Liberty Power, yet still stating during the conversation that they actually worked for CMP. In other cases, CMP customers were contacted, with Liberty Power's representative stating that they were calling on behalf of Bangor Hydro Electric Company (CMP assumes that the caller incorrectly identified which T&D utility serves these customers)," CMP alleged.
Liberty informed the PUC that its Liberty Power Holdings LLC subsidiary recently launched "mass market" electricity products in Maine, more specifically in the CMP territory, effective May 16, 2011. Such mass marketing is apparently limited to small commercial customers as Liberty said that it only contracts with commercial customers in Maine.
Liberty said that it has contracted with National Energy Group (NEG) as a non-exclusive sales channel in multiple jurisdictions.
Liberty said that, "NEG utilizes a call script in its telephone sales activities in which the agent, in the first sentence, clearly identifies himself/herself as calling 'from National Energy group.' Further in the script, the agent references CMP by name which may contribute to confusion by the customer in believing the agent to be from CMP."
"Upon review of the script by Liberty Power, it was determined that the script does not comply with Liberty Power telesales script requirements or sales practices. Liberty Power provides training to all contracted sales channels upon boarding in which the sales channel is clearly instructed not to reference a utility by name. The training instructs sales channels to reference any utility as 'the utility' only ... This training was provided directly to NEG by Liberty Power," Liberty said.
Liberty said that it has instructed NEG to cease call campaigns to Maine customers selling Liberty Power electricity products until further notice. "Liberty Power believes that NEG sales agents identify themselves properly, but have [sic] taken steps to provide revised call scripts to NEG which remove references to any utility by name," Liberty said.
"[T]he investigation [requested by CMP] is unnecessary as Liberty Power has already taken steps to address any perceived improprieties of its contracted sales channels as raised by CMP. It is also noted that Liberty Power has not received any calls to its internal customer care call center from Maine customers," Liberty said.
Liberty Power denied violation of any and all provisions of Chapter 32 of Title 35-A.
In directing Liberty to respond to the allegations, the PUC noted that while National Energy Group has applied for a competitive electricity provider license as an aggregator/broker, the Commission has not yet acted on the application. The application was filed on May 20.
"Based upon the initial information provided to the Commission, if the circumstances outlined above are true, they could constitute a violation of Chapter 305 of the Commission's rules, which require all CEPs, including marketers, to be licensed by the Commission, and requires licensed CEPs, '[t]o use reasonable efforts not to conduct business with any entity acting as a competitive electricity provider in Maine without a license from the Commission,'" the PUC said.
In its June 2 response to the PUC, Liberty did not specifically address the NEG licensing issue.
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