ACM publishes overview of rules for energy resellers

Today, the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) published on its website an overview of the rules that apply to energy resellers. Energy resellers are energy market participants that do not have an energy supply license for small-scale users of their own (so-called white labels). To supply small-scale users, they cooperate with other participants that do have licenses. Such practices are allowed. But a reseller is not allowed to sell contracts in its own name. These contracts must be in the name of the licensee who they cooperate with. Only then will customers be protected in case of a bankruptcy of the licensee or the reseller.

Since ACM has been seeing an increase in the number of resellers recently, it decided to give an overview of the rules that these, often smaller, participants have to comply with.

The most important rules that apply to energy resellers are:

• offering clarity to their customers that they are resellers;
• only offering contracts in the name of the licensee;
• offering clarity about the licensee who they cooperate with;
• offering clarity about the way in which billing and customer service are organized.

Resellers are unaware of rules

ACM has looked into the volume of resold energy and into compliance with the rules before. It did so following the bankruptcy of Trianel Energy in late-2012. It turned out that several parties were active as resellers, but that they had not always been clear to their customers about this fact. It appeared that parties were unaware of the rules that applied to energy reselling. After having been informed about the rules by ACM, the market participants adjusted their customer information.

For all parties that are or wish to be active as resellers, ACM has compiled an overview of the rules for resellers.

• Rules for resellers of energy(in Dutch)
• More information for consumers about energy reselling (in Dutch)