The National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC) has imposed several measures on Endesa, Naturgy, Iberdrola and Holaluz to prevent electricity consumers from being affected by erroneous changes of marketer after complaints skyrocketed since 2021.

Complaints to the CNM for changes of electricity company without the consent of customers and motivated by erroneous supply codes (CUPS) in the new contracts, increased by 360% in 2021, and continued to grow in the first half of 2022.

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Energy.

Iberdrola, Endesa and Naturgy play 400 million in another pulse with Ribera and the CNMC

  • Writing: PAULA MARÍA Madrid

Iberdrola, Endesa and Naturgy play 400 million in another pulse with Ribera and the CNMC

As a result, the weight of this type of claim doubled and would represent 31% of the total for changes without consent.

A "CUPS crossing" means that the user requesting a change of electricity company is mistakenly assigned the CUPS of another customer; Consequently, you will be billed for the consumption of a home or other person's premises.

On the other hand, the consumer who "loses" his CUPS ceases to be supplied by his usual marketer and does not know the name of the marketer who made the change erroneously because he does not appear as the owner in the distributor.

In addition, if you know which marketer made the mistake, it will not recognize you as a customer and will have very difficult to claim.

In fact, in the worst case it can suffer a supply cut if the consumer to whom his CUPS was wrongly assigned cancels the new contract or stops paying the bills of it, when receiving a double billing.

This decision of the CNMC is legally binding and will oblige the affected electricity companies to show clearly and separately to the customer the owner-address trinomial of the supply point-CUPS during the contract.

They should also request confirmation of such data on durable medium if they detect discrepancies in the information and new precautions are established in case of misallocation.

Thus, in the event of a request for a supply cut, a "crossing of CUPS" will be ruled out; the requesting consumer will be contacted, and these contacts must be accredited to the regulator if necessary; and if there has been a "crossing of CUPS", the responsible marketer will request as soon as possible, to replace the supply point of the affected consumer to the previous marketer.

According to The Trust Project criteria

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