Essential Energy

I was not informed of a power outage taking place today . Power outage is for entire day. 18/3/2026. Not good enough. Extremely annoyed Ganmain Nsw 2702 Show details

Frequent planned and unplanned outages, occurring multiple times every year. They need to put more time, energy and resources into providing and maintaining a reliable electricity supply - especially with the exorbitant electricity prices. Absolutely sick and tired of having power outages almost every month that last for hours every time. Show details

I have been reading all the negative reviews on Essential Energy who used to be called Country Energy before re-branding in 2011. Most negative reviews seem to be concerning power outages and the like, which is often the result of storms, fallen trees, motor vehicle collisions or even vandalism and the emergency guys are often out in all sorts of… Read more

weather to restore power at all times of the day. I know all of this because I worked in a an electricity supply company for many years and know how outages are caused and the ongoing effects. HOWEVER, this NEGATIVE review that I am about to relate in detail about Essential Energy (previously Country Energy) has nothing to do with outages or blackouts and EVERYTHING to do with negligence, stupidity, arrogance and even some intimidation, and apparently this activity is amply rewarded because the person at the centre of this complaint is now Head of Communications at Essential Energy. To keep it interesting I will try to be brief with the details which are taken directly from my copy of the original complaint letter sent to the CEO of Country Energy (now on the board of directors for Essential Energy) by registered mail but NEVER acknowledged or NEVER responded to with an apology.

18th October. Changed power supply from Country Energy (now Essential Energy) to AGL. Transfer request sent from AGL to Country Energy (now Essential Energy) same day and recorded as such on both AGL and Country Energy electronic systems as I later verified.

20th October. Country Energy sent final account to me after meter read this date, received in mail 26th October and paid in full same day.

2nd November. Country Energy (now Essential Energy) sends notice of intention to disconnect because I hadn't (1) Signed up with them for power within 10 days of occupying the premises and (2) no transfer request had been received from another supplier. YES IT HAD which was later proven!

2nd November Same day I returned this letter directly to Executive CEO at Queanbeyan with notations regarding transfer request and a copy of receipt of account fully paid.

11th November. At 17:10 pm (ten past 5) received phone call from Country Energy PUBLIC RELATIONS, a Miss or Ms RH advising me that they were in receipt of the returned letter, but that they still haven't received a transfer request from AGL ( yes you had, and a quick system check would have revealed that it had been received 3 weeks before but never acted upon). This was either a hastily conceived falsehood to get me off the telephone or to cover up her lack of ability to access their computer records. After all it was ten past five on a Friday afternoon; there is urgent social engagements to attend etc etc. BUT! Now comes the negligence part of the complaint: She stated that even though the transfer request had been outside the 10 days allowed, she would overlook that fact on this occasion and that NO ACTION WOULD BE TAKEN IN RELATION TO THE POWER BEING DISCONNECTED! (Wow! Oh thank you, thank you so much!) Telephone call completed, another complaint successfully dealt with, and, oh dear look at the time, quick, out the door. Question? Did you even bother to tell anyone about your decision NOT to disconnect?

18th November. 17:20 pm. Returned home to house in darkness. Refrigerator/freezer not working. No storms, no power poles down with vehicular accidents, no emergency crews observed on the way home. Neighbours all have power, street lights are on, I had best call AGL emergency number. Can't do that, telephone doesn't work without power. Drive back to work and use my office phone. AGL informs me that they have NOT received transfer confirmation from Country Energy and therefore they are still in control of the electricity supply. Thirty one (31) days and they still haven't actioned the transfer.

Still 18th November 17:27pm. Telephoned Country Energy's Supply interruption number and spoke with K at Port Macquarie who quickly and accurately accessed their computer program and was able to inform me with confidence that my power should never have been disconnected, because Country Energy has been sitting on the AGL transfer request for weeks without it being actioned. She was so sorry that it had occurred, and took immediate steps to have my power restored as a matter of urgency. About an hour later an emergency crew member arrived and restored my power. I telephoned K at Port Macquarie to let her know that power had been restored. Because she does not belong to the inner circle of protected species, she will never be given the recognition for her quick decisive actions in rectifying a problem that should never have occurred in the first place.

3rd November 09:26 am. The ONLY response that was ever received from this lot was an unpleasant and aggressive phone call from a male person who refused to identify himself (and had his telephone number blocked), demanding to know the reason for my transferring to AGL and that I had no right to do so. When I told him why, he responded with an outright lie that he had just authorised a refund of my bond money from Country Energy back into my account. Oh really? I told him that it had already been refunded TWO weeks ago and was already back in my account (about the only thing they got right!) He became even more aggressive after I corrected him, and I terminated the call. He is probably in a senior management position now. DON'T GO NEAR THIS SUPPLIER. These same people are now in charge of the circus.

Hopeless at thier job they somehow always pick to worst day to do maitnance and evertime they shut the power all I ever see is there workers pissfarting around and talking i swear I get urgent maitnance every second week. Show details

During unplanned outages, their communication with customers is terrible. Please do better! Show details

Dodgey billing policy – Changed energy retailers. Essential energy's final reading for my account was an estimate. That estimate was sent to my new retailer who then uses that reading as a base line to start billing. This is highly unethical and should be illegal. Quick analogy...... A petrol station does not charge for what fuel THEY believe has been put in a vehicle. Power suppliers should be working with accurate data - not estimates Show details

Terrible – Second 24 hr power outage in a month not to mention all the blackouts with a few hours outage. The most unreliable energy provider around Show details

Unreliable – The only thing reliable about essential energy is the power outages. Show details

They just don't care – Unstable power supply in my town, with several power surges in a row and some people are getting these monthly. Upon contacting the company to let them know they brushed people off saying they see nothing in their system to show an outage, I said it was a power surge completely different to an actual outage and she then said well if it's only a… Read more

surge don't worry about it because we can't record that data. My concern is the large appliances and whitegoods (especially the older ones) could break down after a surge in power or worse still start a house fire, especially when its 1 and 2 or 3 surges in quick succession. Essential Energy needs to get their backsides out to my town and take a look at the power lines to see what might be happening, or at least investigate further, because if anyone loses their home to an electrical fault from too many power surges, the insurance company would balk at accepting peoples claims. Electrical fires have started on less than power surges, and when we get a power surge in my town it's not just 1 surge, its like 2 or 3 and one after another. Its really unacceptable in this current day and age.

Power outages for all! – Moved into our new place 2 years ago, have been unpleasantly surprised at how often the power is cut ever since. Planned outages for maintenance that last all day, unplanned outages due to "fuse issues" also cropping up - the service is the least reliable power supply we've ever experienced. Both my wife and I work from home, the loss of… Read more

productivity due to Essential's poor network maintenance and even poorer bandaid solutions costs us $1000s of dollars a year in loss of productivity. Absolutely useless service.

Tired of the constant power outages due to maintenance – Constant power outages due to maintenance. I find it frustrating that as an essential service, they are not able to keep power outages due to maintenance to a minimum. This will be our 3rd outage in 4 months as of this Sunday 25/6/23. It's not just a few hours. It's a whole day!!! In winter!! I'm so tired of this. Where's our compensation it's… Read more

certainly not passed on through the retailer. Someone needs to stand up and say something. It's absolutely not good enough in 2023 in AUSTRALIA!! Meanwhile prices are increasing from July 1. Everyone can read the reviews from 3 to 6 years ago, Essential Energy has not improved the way they handle maintenance and power outages!

Customer warning if installing solar – After paying for a deposit on a Solar power system, the company contacted our electricity provider, Essential Energy for the grid connection application and approval. Essential Energy wanted additional money for the application ; restricted our output to just 2.8Kw even though we had an independent NMI meter and our strata neighbours did not have… Read more

solar. They also wanted to charge us for an Export Control Device. On contacting the company I received different responses. There was no room for negotiation. Basically, this the system was not cost effective so we decided against the installation. Essential Energy seem to be very restrictive and discouraging on the promotion of household solar.

Customer service warning – Dale sold me a 10kv battery and 18 panels to supplement extant panels. The system had stopped working. A call to their 1300 number was quickly answered. A request to send a service technician was refused and the service agent wanted to talk me through fault finding in a complex dual set up. Incredibly defensive and then rude. After an email to the office a technician visit has been promised for two weeks from now. Not good enough Dale. Show details

Stop the intrusive and unwelcome spam texts – This bunch of tools... ugh. I keep getting spam messages to my phone about meter readings. Can't reply, or opt out, of course. I'm not even your customer! And if I was, who cares if its being read? I don't care about your meter reader's covid protocols. I have my own, thanks. Also, have never so much as laid eyes on a meter reader. So stop spamming my phone. Show details

Frequent service disruptions – Essential Energy's high prices, poor reliability and unhelpful customer service are excellent reasons for buying solar panels. We experience regular planned and unplanned outages that range from seconds to hours, sometimes days. As a regional area without town water, electricity outages also mean no water can be pumped from the tanks, so can't… Read more

even flush the toilet. Essential Energy claims that regional customers just shouldn't expect the same level of service as suburban.

Very helpful and quick service – We lost power to part of our house, reported it and it was repaired within an hour. The customer service officer was very helpful and the technicians came to the house afterwards to report that it had been repaired. Thank you for great service. Show details

2 days without power after brief summer storm. Virtually no communication – Power went out after a brief storm at 7pm on a Saturday. Waited for it to come back .... Gave up , went to bed. Woke next day and started making calls to our provider who foisted us off on to their provider. Essential Energy. Waited forever on phone to speak to someone only to be told that they had no idea when it would be fixed but informing us… Read more

that their crew were out looking for the fault ... Later that night we get a short text informing us that it was too late to send out a crew and we would have to wait until Monday for them to begin repairs...... What happened to the crew that were supposed to be already on the job ??? Long story short . Monday afternoon it was finally repaired . Virtually no communication throughout to let us know when we might expect to have our power restored . We used what charge we had on our mobiles to make calls for updates as we were not receiving any .I am very much hoping there is another provider in this area we just moved to because this just is not good enough . * To be fair the persons we did speak to were polite and courteous . They were just unable to give any real information .

Restoration of Power – I would like to commend the outstanding effort of the call centre at Essential Energy & the Field Staff in handling an emergency situation that occurred through this unprecedented floods we are experiencing. They displayed such a professional response to a situation of a major power outage along Pacific Drive, Port Macquarie due to a fallen… Read more

Norfolk Pine. Would shout them a beer if I could. Well done Essential Energy for braving the elements and getting us back to living our priviledged lives.

They fixing the problem but no communication – I’m happy but also a little disappointed with lack of correspondence after I sent in an email to Essential Energy as the power supply to my property was spiking over 254 volts I only knew this as my inverter was shutting down and recording the information in faults, I went around with a multi meter to confirm the high voltage and communicated my… Read more

findings into an email to Essential Energy, never heard a thing until a worker turned up 4 weeks later to say they say they switching my power off to swap over phases and will be back two weeks time to do something to the transformer down the road, I’m happy that Essential Energy are getting things sorted but a little heads up so I could organise things with the power outage so a small thank you.

Waiting time on phone ridiculous – Waiting time on phone to speak to a consultant is beyond reasonable. Leave you hanging on to recorded messages for over 45 minutes and still no answer till can wait no longer. Does not matter what time of day. Show details

Horrible Horrible Horrible.. Avoid at all costs! – Constant drop outs, if you call them their automated message isn't accurate and worst of all they will send you letters about power outages for 20-30 minutes, which is fine.. but they NEVER send you those 6 hour outages and you are left absolutely f&*%ed because you don't plan around it. You don't get extra fuel for the generator etc etc. When… Read more

you do call and complain, it is simply, "sorry 'bout that". Then NOTHING.. They do not give a s&^t. But they are happy to take your $1300+ a quarter!

No power – So storms in the area and the power goes off. Happens every summer. Essential Energy should change their name to No Power. This utility company is a joke. I used to work in the electricity supply industry and unfortunately there is no excuse for the level of incompetence that Essential Energy displays. There is only one reason that the supply is… Read more

so unreliable and that is a lack of maintenance. If maintenance is regularly carried out then power outages are rare. No wonder the NSW Government stopped the lay-off of something like 180 staff. They should be looking to employ more staff not lay them off. I complained last summer about the same issues and a manager promised to look into my concerns and get back to me, but surprise surprise never heard anything, probably because I was right and they didn’t want to admit it. I say it’s time customers started to refuse the payment of the service availability charge until such time as they get there act together.

No power – Power out notified 6hrs later,they have no idea when will be reconnected very poor service,you definately don't get what you pay for very unprofessional,electricity providers must be made accountable,they are just greedy very un australian. Show details

Most rapid response – I had an additional 5.5 KW solar system installed thus adding to my older 2.2KW system. Expecting a huge increase in feedin too the grid I was most disappointed on seeing it was about 1/2 or less than expected. They system was forever cutting out and apparently due to reaching some maximum to the grid. I contacted Origin Energy who told me they… Read more

didn't cause this and to go to Essential Energy. My email to Essential was, in the same day, responded to by phone to arrange for a technician to come to my place - a rural property. They were here early the next morning and on discussing the problem they wound don the voltage at the transformer from 261V to 241V. That solved the problem as we could see by standing and watching the solar system meter reading as it immediately went up to near maximum and stayed there. Since then my 5.5 KW system has been feeding in daily totals of about 30KW in contrast to the 10KW or so it had been doing. Thank you Essential Energy for your rapid response and adjustment to the transformer. My system will now become a good investment as expected when I purchased it. BTW I recommend spending the money on a meter for keeping track of your solar production, feedin and usage.

5 stars for Essential Energy – Had a power outage 10.30pm 29-6-19 reported it to Essential energy they had a technician at my home in 15 minutes repaired it in a further 15 minutes the technician was very helpful  Show details

Just read all the rest of the reviews, they're exactly that bad – This level of incompetence, compounded by the fact that nsw's energy and water ombudsman 'ewon' has received massive amounts of complaints in 2018/19, shows how useless Australian service industries are. Show details

Extraordinary incompetence - with no concept of customer service. Incapable of even sending an email to let you know of – See above. Do you have a reading problem as well? Outages occur far too often. If you ask to lodge a complaint you are put through to a person who - whilst polite - is totally incapable of doing any thing - bu will pass a suggestion on. Show details

Stupid and greedy – I was told by my energy company that for essential energy to do a final meter read for me that it would set me back $93.19. Obviously I assumed this was a lie as no one could ever possibly think it's that hard to go for a five minute drive (literally) and read numbers from a box. After I was unable to find a definitive fee on their website, only… Read more

finding a charge for $86.58 for self-requested, I sent essential energy an enquiry simply asking how much they really charge for this to happen and I was answered by none other than Einstein himself. Einstein (Brad Kirkman of essential energy), told me: "Thank you for your inquiry received in this office today relating to how much Red energy is charged for disconnection. All of Essential Energy’s costings and charges are located on our website. Essentialenergy.com.au". Thanks genius. Clearly the staff are incompetent at answering even the most basic of questions; failing to even realise that I clearly stated meter read and not disconnection. So with the lack of assistance I did some digging on other websites with a human friendly layout and discovered that YES they actually do charge nearly $100 just to drive around the corner and write a number down!

In summary, essential energy has incompetent staff and exorbitant fees for even the smallest tasks. If you are lucky enough to have a choice of energy distributor, don't pick these clowns.

No idea and left in the dark – Sitting in a 38deg evening and into my 5th hour of No power and still No idea when its gonna happen. The switch being turned back on.. My friends live in Vic 1 hr away and Powercore sends a TXT on when the power is out, due to be back on and a final one when it is back on.. Essential Energy wont allow you to talk them even if you own a food… Read more

business. NO ONE HAS ANY IDEA WHATS GOING ON. the thing is, they do know. They have a rough idea whats going on especially if they are waiting for a special technician from another area. It would make a difference if just a little information was shared. We all have Familys, its a school night, we have food business and we are all in NEED of some sort of info. WHY HAVE A WEBSITE THAT YOU TELL US TO GO TO FOR INFORMATION THAT IS NOT THERE...

Monrel Essential Energy.

Energy Matters gave me all that I requested – Many thanks to the company and staff that made everything easy for me and family to get into Solar Energy.Also teir backup warranty service was 1st class.All working well especially with a quality inerter supplied.

Awful at providing residential power – Thee phase residential power connected in NSW. Regular outages with terrible response times. Worse than any other Australian provider and I've been with a wide variety in various locations. Seriously consider this when moving into an area they service.

STREET LIGHT OUT FOR OVER 6 MONTHS – Street light (Pole No CE 56694) has not been fixed for over 6 months after being reported 7 times. If these people cannot replace a Street light then I can understand now why electricity is so expensive. Absolutely hopeless as they lie to me every time I ring telling me that someone has been out to fix the light. Not true - the light is still not working and has never been fixed.

Constant Planned power outages in middle of summer – Why are you guys always turning off our power in the middle of summer for most of the day? This is the 3rd in a very short time. Why aren't you working on the issues while we sleep? We pay enough for it I'm sure you can afford the overtime.