The energy organisation forcibly changed contracts to exchange strength – the client ombudsman forbids the interest

GNP Energy has changed fixed-price contracts which might be legitimate in the interim into exchange power contracts. According to the Consumer Ombudsman, this cannot work.

Consumer consultant intervenes within the operations of the electricity organisation GNP Energy. The agency has changed constant-rate contracts that are legitimate till in addition be aware into alternate energy contracts.

According to the decision of the Consumer Ombudsman, this can't work. It prohibits consumers from converting the varieties of strength contracts under risk of a quality of eighty,000 euros.

In June, GNP Energy changed its call to Hehku Energia.

The situation the background is the end of operations of the strength organization Lumo Energia in September 2022. The agency filed for financial disaster in early November. After the cessation of operations, about forty,000 former clients of Lumo transferred to GNP Energy.

After the transition, GNP Energy informed a number of its customers that the fixed-charge contracts legitimate in the mean time can be modified to alternate power contracts. The corporation justified the alternate with a sizable boom inside the marketplace charge of power and power procurement expenses.

After this, severa purchasers contacted the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority (KKV). The contacts concerned charge increases and other settlement modifications made via GNP Energy.

Consumer consultant Katri Väänänen notion that GNP’s settlement modifications were now not justified.

“There are essential variations in strength contracts, and the patron need to be able to pick the form of agreement himself, depending on which characteristic he desires to emphasize at any given time. A unilateral change within the kind of contract via the vendor works towards this,” writes Väänänen in KKV’s press release.

The KKV said this become now not the first time it needed to intervene in GNP Energy’s unilateral agreement adjustments. According to KKV, the organisation already made similar changes to contracts in 2018.

At that time, the company confident the purchaser consultant that within the future it might not unilaterally change clients’ fixed-price power sales contracts to trade energy contracts inside the future.

“GNP Energy therefore did not observe its dedication within the fall of 2022,” KKV writes in its press launch on Wednesday.

In autumn In 2022, the electricity market lived in an ecosystem of fear. As a result of the Russian battle of aggression, the price of natural gas and energy had skyrocketed. For instance, in August 2022, the rate of power on the stock exchange in Finland become nearly 7 instances higher than the standard August.

GNP justified its agreement modifications with the incredible market state of affairs. According to the business enterprise, it had to change contracts in an effort to be able to secure its commercial enterprise and the supply of strength to clients.

“According to the organisation, it acted especially inside the pastimes of customers when it transferred contracts to the scope of trade strength instead of growing the price of fixed-fee contracts legitimate in the intervening time several instances over. The agency pointed to the reality that purchasers had later benefited from the discount in the price of power on the alternate, and it additionally taken into consideration that it had a special purpose for its settlement change as described by means of the Electricity Market Act,” reads KKV’s Wednesday assertion.

However, in step with the client consultant, the winning price scenario in the electricity marketplace is not a enough basis for a contract exchange.

There are particularly three forms of energy contracts on sale in Finland: fixed-price constant-term contracts, contracts following the charge of the energy alternate, and fixed-fee contracts legitimate indefinitely. Each kind of contract has its personal unique functions, however the critical factor is that the vendor cannot, along with his unilateral word, change the kind of agreement completely to every other with out the client’s approval. On the opposite hand, even purchasers cannot terminate, as an example, a hard and fast-term settlement at will.

The patron consultant the settlement become notified to GNP Energy on July 12. The organisation has now not introduced the ban before the market courtroom within the 30-day cut-off date. It method that the ban remained everlasting from Friday eleven August.