Essential Energy

This bunch of tools... ugh.

I keep getting spam messages to my phone about meter readings. Can't reply, or opt out, of course.

I'm not even your customer!

And if I was, who cares if its being read? I don't care about your meter reader's covid protocols. I have my own, thanks.

Also, have never so much as laid eyes on a meter reader.

So stop spamming my phone.

Essential Energy's high prices, poor reliability and unhelpful customer service are excellent reasons for buying solar panels.
We experience regular planned and unplanned outages that range from seconds to hours, sometimes days.
As a regional area without town water, electricity outages also mean no water can be pumped from the tanks, so can't even flush the toilet.
Essential Energy claims that regional customers just shouldn't expect the same level of service as suburban.

We lost power to part of our house, reported it and it was repaired within an hour. The customer service officer was very helpful and the technicians came to the house afterwards to report that it had been repaired. Thank you for great service.

Power went out after a brief storm at 7pm on a Saturday. Waited for it to come back .... Gave up, went to bed. Woke next day and started making calls to our provider who foisted us off on to their provider. Essential Energy. Waited forever on phone to speak to someone only to be told that they had no idea when it would be fixed but informing us that their crew were out looking for the fault ... Later that night we get a short text informing us that it was too late to send out a crew and we would have to wait until Monday for them to begin rep...

I would like to commend the outstanding effort of the call centre at Essential Energy & the Field Staff in handling an emergency situation that occurred through this unprecedented floods we are experiencing. They displayed such a professional response to a situation of a major power outage along Pacific Drive, Port Macquarie due to a fallen Norfolk Pine. Would shout them a beer if I could.
Well done Essential Energy for braving the elements and getting us back to living our priviledged lives.

I’m happy but also a little disappointed with lack of correspondence after I sent in an email to Essential Energy as the power supply to my property was spiking over 254 volts I only knew this as my inverter was shutting down and recording the information in faults, I went around with a multi meter to confirm the high voltage and communicated my findings into an email to Essential Energy, never heard a thing until a worker turned up 4 weeks later to say they say they switching my power off to swap over phases and will be back two weeks time to do something to the transformer down the road, I’m happy that Essential Energy are getting things sorted but a little heads up so I could organise things with the power outage so a small thank you.

Waiting time on phone to speak to a consultant is beyond reasonable. Leave you hanging on to recorded messages for over 45 minutes and still no answer till can wait no longer. Does not matter what time of day.

Constant drop outs, if you call them their automated message isn't accurate and worst of all they will send you letters about power outages for 20-30 minutes, which is fine.. but they NEVER send you those 6 hour outages and you are left absolutely f&*%ed because you don't plan around it. You don't get extra fuel for the generator etc etc.

When you do call and complain, it is simply, "sorry 'bout that". Then NOTHING.. They do not give a s&^t. But they are happy to take your $1300+ a quarter!

So storms in the area and the power goes off. Happens every summer. Essential Energy should change their name to No Power. This utility company is a joke. I used to work in the electricity supply industry and unfortunately there is no excuse for the level of incompetence that Essential Energy displays. There is only one reason that the supply is so unreliable and that is a lack of maintenance. If maintenance is regularly carried out then power outages are rare. No wonder the NSW Government stopped the lay-off of something like 180 staff. They s...

Power out notified 6hrs later,they have no idea when will be reconnected very poor service,you definately don't get what you pay for very unprofessional,electricity providers must be made accountable,they are just greedy very un australian.

I had an additional 5.5 KW solar system installed thus adding to my older 2.2KW system. Expecting a huge increase in feedin too the grid I was most disappointed on seeing it was about 1/2 or less than expected. They system was forever cutting out and apparently due to reaching some maximum to the grid. I contacted Origin Energy who told me they didn't cause this and to go to Essential Energy. My email to Essential was, in the same day, responded to by phone to arrange for a technician to come to my place - a rural property. They were here early...

Had a power outage 10.30pm 29-6-19 reported it to Essential energy they had a technician at my home in 15 minutes repaired it in a further 15 minutes the technician was very helpful

This level of incompetence, compounded by the fact that nsw's energy and water ombudsman 'ewon' has received massive amounts of complaints in 2018/19, shows how useless Australian service industries are.

See above. Do you have a reading problem as well? Outages occur far too often. If you ask to lodge a complaint you are put through to a person who - whilst polite - is totally incapable of doing any thing - bu will pass a suggestion on.

I was told by my energy company that for essential energy to do a final meter read for me that it would set me back $93.19. Obviously I assumed this was a lie as no one could ever possibly think it's that hard to go for a five minute drive (literally) and read numbers from a box. After I was unable to find a definitive fee on their website, only finding a charge for $86.58 for self-requested, I sent essential energy an enquiry simply asking how much they really charge for this to happen and I was answered by none other than Einstein himself. Ei...