Энергетический ритейлер Genesis Energy потерял рекордные 35 тысяч клиентов за год

Genesis Energy shed more power customers than any other retailer over the past year, losing a net 35,015 households and businesses in the 12 months to June, according to switching figures published by the Electricity Authority. The number, reported by RNZ on Thursday, puts the country’s third largest electricity retailer well ahead of the pack when it comes to customers walking out the door. Most of the movement traces back to a single decision. Genesis retired its budget brand Frank Energy, closing it to new customers on 9 June 2025 and then shifting existing Frank households across to the main Genesis brand. Customers who did not want to make that move were free to shop around, and plenty of them did. Powerswitch general manager Paul Fuge said the Genesis loss was probably due in large part to the retirement of the Frank brand, and that his own comparison service saw a jump in traffic and switching from the middle of last year when the wind-down was announced. Genesis had run three separate retail brands, Genesis, Frank and Ecotricity, before folding them all into one. The company told RNZ the consolidation created a simpler experience for customers but came with some attrition during the transition. On its own preferred measure, which strips out new connections such as households moving into a freshly built home, Genesis put its net loss at 28,942 rather than 35,015. Either way it is a large number for a retailer that still counts its customer base in the hundreds of thousands. Genesis was not the only retailer going backwards. Nova lost a net 9,059 customers over the year, Manawa lost 3,329 and Mercury lost 2,706. On the other side of the ledger, Contact Energy added a net 20,577 customers, Electric Kiwi picked up 11,590 and Meridian gained 10,288. Meridian’s headline figure hides a busy year underneath it, with the retailer signing up more than 100,000 new customers on a gross basis while losing 93,919, a reminder that a modest net gain can sit on top of an enormous amount of churn. Across the whole market, just under 458,000 customers switched retailer in the year to June. That is a healthy level of movement in a country with roughly two million electricity accounts, and it is the kind of activity regulators like to see because switching is the main lever ordinary households have to push back on their power bill. When customers move, retailers have to compete harder to keep them, and that competition is supposed to hold prices down. The longer run picture is less flattering for the bigger gentailers. Genesis has lost close to 51,000 net customers over the past two years, while Mercury has shed 33,276 over five years. Those are slow, steady declines rather than sudden collapses, but they point to a pattern where the large established retailers keep leaking customers to smaller and mid-sized rivals that market themselves on price or on cleaner energy. Fuge also pointed to something less visible in the raw numbers. He said conversion rates had been slipping, meaning retailers were turning away more of the customers who tried to sign up than they used to, particularly people with poor credit histories. In a cost of living squeeze that has left more households behind on their bills, retailers have become choosier about who they take on, which makes it harder for some of the very people who most need a cheaper deal to actually get one. For most households the practical message from the figures is a familiar one. The gap between the cheapest and dearest plans on the market can run to several hundred dollars a year for the same amount of power, and loyalty is rarely rewarded. Free tools such as the Government funded Powerswitch service run by Consumer NZ let people compare offers using their own usage, and the switching process itself is handled by the retailers rather than requiring any change to the wires or the meter at the property. The backdrop to all of this is a power market that has been under close scrutiny. Consumer NZ research earlier in the year found that around one in two people were not satisfied with their electricity company, and the winter has again brought complaints about high fixed charges and the size of profits reported by the big generators. Wholesale prices have eased from the extreme spikes seen in past dry years, which has raised hopes that retail bills could start to come down, but households are not banking on it while the cost of everything else stays high. Whether Genesis can stem the losses now that its brand tidy-up is largely done will show up in next year’s figures. For the moment the numbers tell a simple story. When a familiar budget brand disappears, a lot of customers take it as their cue to look at what else is on offer, and in a market with dozens of retailers competing for attention, many of them do not come back. Have you switched power companies in the past year, and did it actually save you money? Share your experience in the comments below.