The city’s top energy and environmental official is sounding the alarm over competitive energy suppliers, saying the companies are targeting people in neighborhoods like Dorchester and Mattapan.
For years, the companies have sent employees to people’s doors, with a request to see residents’ energy bills and the promise of lower rates. They’ve sometimes falsely claimed to be from utilities such as National Grid or Eversource, in an attempt to get residents to sign a contract with them, city and state officials have said.
Clean Choice and Direct Energy, two competitive suppliers operating in Boston, claimed they do not engage in such tactics, when asked about what Mariama White-Hammond, a Dorchester resident who serves as Mayor Wu’s energy and environmental chief, had to say about industry practices.
People who have switched to a competitive electric supplier are paying more than if they had stayed with their service, according to a state-level analysis, and low-income residents and communities of color are disproportionately affected.
Along with Dorchester and Mattapan, the worst-hit Boston neighborhoods include Hyde Park, Roxbury, and East Boston, according to White-Hammond.
“What’s most despicable about this is they tend to target seniors, people whose English isn’t their first language, and low-income communities,” she said.
The introductory rates they quote, she said, are almost never given in writing, and while the company employees sent to people’s doors are bilingual, the contracts are in English.
“These are really underhanded techniques,” she said.
City officials have been pushing their own program, known as “Community Choice Electricity,” saying that while they also offer lower rates than utilities like Eversource, the third-party suppliers are taking advantage, White-Hammond said, by sending employees to people’s doors claiming to be from the city.
“The city will never send someone to your door to sell you electricity,” she said. “If they claim to be us, it is not true.” Residents should ask to see the person’s ID card and ask them whom they work for, she added.
“We’re trying to get the word out to everyone and every place that we can so we can dry up their ability to go to people’s doors and trick them.”
White-Hammond is personally familiar with their tactics: She tells of an employee of a competitive electricity supplier who recently came to her house. She was at City Hall, but her husband, Rahn Dorsey, was home to answer the door. He dialed White-Hammond and put the employee on the phone, who claimed to be moving them to “Community Choice.” If that was the case, White-Hammond told the employee, “you’d be working for me. And we don’t send people to people’s doors.”
After that exchange, the supplier employee left the home without saying who his true employer was.
Estefanía Joy, a spokesperson for Direct Energy, said in an emailed statement that any sales agent who doesn’t follow rules and regulations, or company standards, is subject to discipline, “up to and including termination.” But the spokesperson was unable to say, despite being directly asked twice, whether they’ve actually fired someone.
Kate Colarulli, a CleanChoice energy spokesperson, said the company doesn’t engage in door-to-door sales, but prefers direct mail and the Internet. She did not respond to a question about whether Clean Choice has ever engaged in door-to-door sales.
“We are aware that there are retail companies whose practices are concerning – as there are in most industries,” she wrote. “We are in support of policies that ensure best practices and consumer protection.”
For now, Mayor Wu has signed onto legislation at the State House that would ban competitive electric supply companies across Massachusetts. Attorney General Andrea Campbell also supports the bill, which the industry opposes.
Campbell’s predecessor, Gov. Healey, had issued reports laying out the higher costs of competitive electric suppliers’ contracts and pursued complaints against suppliers for “aggressive and deceptive” sales tactics, including the harassment of customers with multiple calls or home visits, where some salespeople allegedly refused to leave an elderly person’s home without a signed contract.
While attorney general, Healey reached agreements with multiple companies over deceptive sales tactics, notably with Connecticut’s Starion Energy, which was forced to pay up to $10 million after allegedly “luring” more than 100,000 Bay State residents into “expensive” contracts with high electricity rates.
White-Hammond said that when residents call City Hall complaining about the competitive electric suppliers, her office directs them to the attorney general. But the problem, according to White-Hammond, is that the contracts residents sign are often different, with a higher rate, from what the salespeople told them at the door in another language, and the companies can chalk up any dispute to a “he said, she said” matter.
“It’s kind of hard to keep up with a company that is making so much money off of people,” White-Hammond said. “We need a legislative fix. While we work on a legislative fix, we need every imam, every coach, we need every home health worker, we need everybody who engages with multiple different folks to check and make sure people are not paying for these kinds of bills.”
