Synergy customers overcharged $40 million <\/a><\/p>\nMore than 170,000 customers have been overcharged a total of $40 million by WA’s state-owned energy retailer Synergy since 2009, sparking an apology from its CEO.<\/p>\n
“To be frank, it’s a very, very serious lapse in Synergy governance.”<\/p>\n
The review into Synergy is part of a broader effort by the Economic Regulation Authority to understand the full extent of the issue across the industry.<\/p>\n
Mr Edwell has flagged there are other businesses which have also overcharged customers in a similar fashion.<\/p>\n
“It doesn’t appear to be an endemic problem across the sector [but] that doesn’t mean to say we won’t be taking some form of action against some other retailers,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Edwell said he was unable to reveal details about the other businesses, or the full extent of the issue, until the review was complete.<\/p>\n
Refunds coming<\/p>\n
Synergy said on Friday it would contact all affected customers and issue cash refunds, or credit for future bills, but that process could take several months.<\/p>\n
“On behalf of Synergy I’d like to say I’m sincerely sorry for the impact that we’ve had on our customers,” Mr Baker said.<\/p>\n
“I’m confident this will not happen again.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/37cb9b5dc1a201d99c82bb2b9a5d9794\")
<\/p>\n
Kurt Baker says he’s confident the issue won’t be repeated. (ABC News: Cason Ho)<\/p>\n
“We’ve done our own internal reviews, we’ve got the state government’s independent review, we’ll be taking our findings, the state government’s findings, to improve our systems.”<\/p>\n
Mr Edwell said ERAWA had the ability to issue fines of “over $100,000” if businesses like Synergy failed to fix the issue.<\/p>\n
“The penalty of that size is in nowhere near proportion to the damage that’s done here,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The ERA is currently considering as part of this review, what we can say to Synergy, what we can say to government, about appropriate enforcement action.”<\/p>\n
Loading…Loading<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A $40 million overcharging bungle by WA’s largest energy retailer was a result of serious governance failures and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,46,86,84218,127041,127039,127038,127040,127037,25962,45],"class_list":["post-204290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-perth","tag-perth-news","tag-synergy","tag-synergy-complaint","tag-synergy-news","tag-synergy-overcharge","tag-synergy-perth","tag-synergy-refund","tag-wa","tag-wa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}