The Better Business Bureau and local utilities are warning consumers to be cautious in the face of aggressive, door-to-door sales pitches by electricity retailers.

Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro and Waterloo North Hydro say customers have complained about strong-arm tactics used to get them to lock into long-term energy contracts. The alleged tactics include forging identification, processing unauthorized contracts and providing misleading sales figures, the utilities say.

“They are targeting senior citizens or people that don’t have the greatest command of the English language and they think that they’re being approached by Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro when they are definitely not,” said Ron Charie, the utility’s president and chief executive.

The Better Business Bureau website says 174 complaints have been lodged against Direct Energy Marketing Ltd. in the past three years and 29 complaints have been made against Ontario Energy Savings Corp.

Officials at both companies said they were not aware of problems.

One key complaint is that the energy retailers’ salespeople use information from homeowners’ utility bills to make the switch to another company, the bureau’s Anne Hart said.

“They ask to see your last bill and, before you know it, you’ve changed over,” said Hart, spokesperson for the Mid-Western and Central Ontario Better Business Bureau. “They’ve just taken your information even if you haven’t signed anything.”

The bureau tells customers to challenge retailers to produce a signed authorization for the switch. “When they can’t, they have to cancel the contract.”

Charie said he’s heard some salespeople have tried to pass themselves off as representing Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro.

“We don’t have any electricity retailers going around asking people for contracts,” he said.

The problems arose after the Ontario government opened the electricity market in 2002. Consumers can either stay with a local energy provider that offers prices that fluctuate or change to one of the dozens of firms that blanketed the province with people selling multi-year contracts at a fixed rate.

Charie said: “Consumers really need to be cautious about what they sign and what information they provide when these energy retailers appear at their doors.”

John Janzen, spokesperson for Waterloo North Hydro, said he believes some salespeople are driven by the need to secure contracts, even at the expense of accurate information.

The salespeople “are being paid for every signature they collect,” he said. “They’re going to do whatever they can in order to close the deal.”

Janzen said he was approached by an energy salesperson, so he tested the man’s knowledge.

“They understood very little about the energy market, but what they did understand was the sales script they had been instructed to use,” Janzen said.

“Once they had someone to challenge them about the market, about some of the things they were suggesting, they were quickly lost.”

Brennan Mulcahy, chief executive of Ontario Energy Savings, was adamant his salespeople operate under a strict code of conduct, which is mandated by the Ontario Energy Board.

The code makes it impossible for consumers to be switched to any electricity retailer without their consent, he said.

“We do use direct sales agents to solicit customers,” Mulcahy said. “But we also have very high standards to use professionally trained representatives that identify themselves.

“After the contract is signed, the customer gets a conversation from a call centre that is digitally recorded confirming their desire to enrol in the contract.”

Furthermore, customers who enter into contracts with electricity retailers have the option of opting out within 10 days of signing the agreement, Mulcahy said.

Direct Energy spokesperson Joshua Orzech said he’s unaware of any salespeople misrepresenting the company.

He also wasn’t aware of the numerous complaints lodged against his company with the Better Business Bureau.

“But we’ll have to look into it,” Orzech said. “We do regularly work with the media and the Better Business Bureau or anyone that comes forward with a complaint. And we do our best to correct it.”

Both Orzech and Mulcahy refute the suggestion that their salespeople have demanded to see customer’s utility bills in order to process a contract without proper authorization.

“We wouldn’t tolerate any incidents like that from happening,” said Mulcahy, citing the Ontario Energy Board’s code of conduct which prohibits salespeople from using consumer information for any other purpose without written consent.

The board, which regulates natural gas and electricity utilities, says that if a customer complains to the board about a retailer and complains to the board, the compliance department launches an investigation. If the department finds wrongdoing and the retailer is at fault, the board can levy a fine. In more serious matters, the board can revoke a retailer’s licence.

“We look for trends against a particular marketer, and, if a trend does exist, we obviously red flag it and investigate it further,” said Paul Crawford, spokesperson for the board.

Information regarding fines levied against electricity retailers is not readily available to the public without a Freedom of Information request, he said, although the board is planning to launch a website in 2007.