New Zealand power companies have been told to make sure the apps they push customers onto actually work, after complaints about customer service overtook complaints about prices for the first time. Utilities Disputes Commissioner Neil Mallon told RNZ on Tuesday that complaints about retailer apps had climbed about 300 percent, and that the scheme was on track for around 16,500 complaints this year.
That would be up from about 12,500 in 2025, Mallon said, and it comes after a year in which complaint numbers had already risen 62 percent. Over five years, complaints to the free dispute service have climbed more than 500 percent.
One retailer stands out. Utilities Disputes’ latest figures show Powershop, the Meridian Energy-owned brand, accounted for 13 percent of all complaints that had to be settled with the help of the Commissioner, well above its share of the market. The NZ Herald reported in August that Powershop holds about 6 percent of the retail electricity market, which means its share of the hardest cases is roughly double what its size would suggest.
Mallon did not single out one company when describing the pattern. He said people were coming to the scheme after struggling to get through to call centres, disputing bills they did not understand, and then finding the apps they had been told to use were no help in sorting it out.
“We’ve seen at Utilities Dispute an increase of around 300 percent in the complaints we’re getting about apps and what customers are telling us is delays getting through to the call centre, they’re also telling us they’ve got disputed bills and they’re having issues with using those apps to sort their way through,” he told RNZ.
Powershop’s troubles date back to April, when it moved customers onto a new app called Powershop Lab at the same time as its prices rose. Consumer NZ reported on 30 April that customers were seeing bill estimates hundreds of dollars above what they normally paid. Powershop said at the time its underlying prices had risen an average of 7.9 percent, about $5.90 a week including GST, and that more than 40 percent of the increase came from network charges outside its control. Chief customer officer Lisa Hannifin told Consumer NZ the figures in the app were forward-looking estimates rather than actual charges.
The complaints have not gone away. RNZ spoke to a retired Auckland couple who said they had received monthly power bills of between $650 and $800 despite living in a warm, insulated house, and had been unable to reach Powershop to find out why. A Facebook page set up for Powershop complaints has 2000 members regularly posting their problems, RNZ reported. Hannifin told RNZ that Meridian was aware of the app problems customers had experienced and was sorry for them.
Mallon’s advice to the industry was mostly about timing and honesty. He said retailers should be clear with customers about any changes to the apps or websites they rely on, and should avoid rolling out new systems in winter or around April, when prices usually rise. Launching unfamiliar technology just as households open their biggest bills of the year was a bad idea, he said.
He also said companies needed to think about who their customers actually were. “But also what’s your customer base – are they the sort of customers that can readily pick up these apps and use that technology or do they need more support?”
Some retailers now operate almost entirely through digital channels with no call centre at all. Mallon said that could suit some people, but those companies needed to spell it out before anyone signed up.
“What I would say about those is they need to be really clear with customers before they sign up those are the only channels they can access because it’s not for everyone and if you do have a complaint or an issue, that’s where generally you want to speak to someone, you don’t want to go through a digital channel,” he said.
That point matters for anyone comparing power plans. Price comparison sites rank retailers on cost, but Mallon said people switching providers needed more than price information. “They need to know how am I going to communicate, what access am I going to get to a real person or an app and how am I going to use this service.”
The broader rise in complaints reflects several pressures at once, Mallon said, including greater public awareness of the dispute service, the cost of living and rising electricity prices. The scheme’s 2025-26 annual report, released in July, recorded 13,554 formal complaints for the year to June, and NEWS WIRE reported at the time that affordability complaints had grown more than tenfold since 2021.
Most complaints never need a formal ruling. Mallon said about 90 percent were resolved simply by working with the company and the customer. “The very complex protracted ones, about 200, go through to me and I issue a decision,” he said. Those are the cases where Powershop’s 13 percent share is measured.
For households stuck in a billing dispute or unable to get through to their retailer, the scheme is free to use. Customers are expected to raise the problem with their power company first, but if that goes nowhere they can take it to Utilities Disputes, which Mallon said would look at issues with apps and with contacting retailers as well as disputed bills.
The warning lands at an awkward moment for retailers. Electricity costs are firmly on the election agenda, and the industry has spent years encouraging customers to manage their accounts through a phone rather than a person. If a third more New Zealanders complain this year than last, the question of whether those apps are saving money or simply shifting the work onto customers will be hard for the companies to avoid.
Have you had trouble reaching your power company or making sense of a bill through its app? Tell us about it in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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