Customers angry at increase in electricity charges

Rashna Tata faces returning to a cold home or paying more. Photo / Greg Bowker

Rashna Tata doesn't like coming home to a cold house.

As a result, winter power bills for her three-person household reach $400 a month, including heating and hot showers - a cost that is about to rise by $12 a month.

Ms Tata, 49, was angry to learn her power company Mercury Energy was increasing prices from July 1.

"It is not a big amount, it is just that it has happened at the wrong time of the year - winter, when people's bills are fairly large anyway.

"Everybody [in our house] is out in the daytime but in the evening the heaters are on, the showers are on. We don't really get stingy on our electricity.

"By the time I get home from the city - I'm sitting on the motorway for an hour and a half sometimes - and the last thing you want to do is go to a cold house."

Ms Tata, a Dannemora resident, doubted the explanation that the price rise was because of the Emissions Trading Scheme.

"They will put their prices up every year ... maybe this is just a reason that they use [this year]," she said.

Living further west in Mt Eden, Ash Parekh's monthly bill for his three-person family is more modest at $125. The family home is well insulated and the three will watch television under a blanket, rather than turn on a heater.

But the father of one was equally put out by the price rise. "People like us with a family it does affect," he said. He said it came at a bad time, with food prices rising and GST due to rise in October as part of a package of income tax cuts.

"How can you save with these kind of extra expenses?" he asked. "It is small, small things but it does matter at the end of the year."

Farhan Mirza had worked out that his five-person household would be paying about $70 extra a year on top of their $200 monthly power bills.

"$70 a year is basically two months of Sky or a month of internet or something like that so it does add up."

He feared another price rise if the company realised the ETS had cost more than it thought.