Important public notice — Supreme Court of Victoria makes orders reflecting admissions by Sumo that it contravened Victoria’s energy laws
In two separate proceedings brought by the Essential Services Commission, the Supreme Court of Victoria has made orders reflecting admissions by Sumo (comprising Sumo Power Pty Ltd and Sumo Gas Pty Ltd) contravened Victoria’s energy laws.
Sumo and the Essential Services Commission jointly proposed an agreed penalty of $10 million in penalties, and $200,000 toward the Essential Services Commission’s legal costs.
You can read the Essential Services Commission’s media releases online now:
Contraventions related to best offer messaging – proceeding no S ECI 2024 00858
The Supreme Court of Victoria has made orders reflecting admissions that Sumo contravened Victoria’s energy rules when they failed to provide customers with accurate information regarding their best available energy offer. The contraventions occurred over the 18 months from February 2022 to August 2023, and affected more than 60,000 Victorian electricity and gas customer accounts. The contraventions arose from errors in Sumo’s IT system coding, which caused the best offer messages to be calculated incorrectly or fail to send. Sumo has rectified the errors and recognises the importance of best offer messages for customers.
The Court made orders reflecting admissions that Sumo failed to:
- Correctly calculate best offer messages in accordance with Victorian energy laws, affecting 38,219 electricity customers and 24,342 gas customers between February and July 2022.
- Provide best offer messages at least every 3 months for electricity customers and at least every 4 months for gas customers, in accordance with Victorian energy laws, affecting 21,165 electricity customers and 35 gas customers between April 2022 and August 2023.
Contraventions related to door-to-door marketing and sales – proceeding no S ECI 2023 05897
The Supreme Court of Victoria has made orders reflecting admissions that Sumo contravened Victoria’s energy laws when it:
- Engaged in unlawful door-to-door marketing of energy contracts to at least 5,941 Victorian consumers between 13 January 2022 and 12 August 2022.
Signed up two customers to energy contracts with Sumo in 2021 and 2022 without obtaining those customers’ ‘explicit informed consent’, including by obtaining their signatures where they did not know they were signing new energy contracts.
Sumo erroneously believed that its process for door-to-door marketing was not prohibited by the relevant laws – but this view was wrong.
The failures to obtain ‘explicit informed consent’ were committed by sales agents on Sumo’s behalf, and Sumo did not encourage or condone that conduct.
Penalties and other orders
For their contraventions related to best offer messaging and door-to-door marketing, consistently with the agreed penalties proposed by Sumo and the Commission, the Supreme Court of Victoria has ordered Sumo to:
- Pay $10 million in penalties.
- Comply with an order requiring them to undertake an independent internal quality assurance process to verify the accuracy of their best offer messages before sending them to customers.
- Comply with an injunction restraining them from conducting any door-to-door marketing and sales of energy contracts for a period of three years.
- Publish 4 separate public notices in each of the Age and Herald Sun newspapers.