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If you want to buy electricity and gas at a low price, you have to compare prices and, if necessary, change providers. Power providers apparently want to change that with Schufa and a credit bureau.
By Lea Busch and Peter Hornung, NDR
Electricity and gas customers who want to switch providers more frequently could soon be systematically discouraged from doing so. After investigation by the Ed and the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, Schufa and the Munich credit agency CRIF Bürgel have developed databases in which the contract data of as many customers as possible in the industry should be stored.
Consumer and privacy advocates fear that energy providers will use it to identify consumers who are willing to change and subsequently reject them. At the beginning of November, the data protection authorities of the federal states and the federal government want to coordinate this issue.
Unattractive “Bonushopper”
Customers who switched back after the minimum contract period were fundamentally unattractive to energy providers and were labeled “bonus hoppers,” said Barbara Saerbeck of the Federal Association of Consumer Centers (VZBV). Saerbeck fears that if gas and power companies could use these databases to see in the future that customers have changed frequently, they could systematically reject them or deny them attractive terms.
The Hamburg portal “Wechselpilot” has found that some energy providers are turning away one in five new customers in the meantime. Often, no reasons are given for refusals, says Jan Rabe, managing director of “Wechselpilot”. Rejected customers would have to go to another provider and, in the worst case, an expensive basic service fee.
Collecting data on loyal customers
Until now, only the data of customers who do not pay their bills or who cheat can be exchanged across the industry. The new databases, on the other hand, must also contain data from customers loyal to the contract. Data protection expert and former Schleswig-Holstein state data protection officer Thilo Weichert is highly critical of this. Such groups meant that consumers could no longer freely choose between providers. In this way, customers would become “fair game for the entire industry.”
According to the investigation, Germany’s largest credit bureau, Schufa, designed a database called “Schufa-E-Pool”. In it, energy providers should find “valuable advice” “through information about the existing energy bill and the current term,” according to an advertising flyer. Businesses could use this data for their “new customer business decision-making process.”
There are still plans
The credit agency CRIF Bürgel evidently developed a similar pool for energy providers whose concept was based on information from Ed and SZ is being verified by the competent Bavarian data protection authority. The company declined to comment on the details when asked. A spokesman limited himself to affirming that “in general there was no information on possible future projects”. CRIF Bürgel and Schufa emphasized that one always adheres to applicable law.
Schufa spokesperson Ingo A. Koch stated that “Schufa E-Pool” was not yet “marketable”: “Basically, we continued with the idea.” It is currently open “yes and yes, in what form” it will be resumed. According to the investigation, the database was announced online and in a current company brochure in mid-August 2020. The website was only removed after Ed and SZ had asked about the background of this database. The presentation of “Schufa-E-Pool” in a company brochure was an “editorial oversight”.
Fact-based energy account?
In any case, “the idea behind the e-pool is not to prevent a change,” said Schufa spokesman Koch. The credit bureau responded to the corresponding wishes of the energy industry at an early stage. According to the current state of development, only the factual and temporary existence of the current energy account, as well as unpaid bills, are saved in the database. With such information, energy providers can even accept customers as contractual partners that they would not otherwise accept.
Consumer advocate Barbara Saerbeck sees it differently. Even if only a small amount of information about energy bills is saved, there is a risk that customers will be discriminated against in the future. The runtime indication is enough to tell if someone wants to switch again after a short time, says Saerbeck.
Legitimate or critical?
The supervisory authorities of the federal states responsible for data protection want to advise in the first week of November if such databases are allowed for energy providers in the future. The Hessian State Data Protection Commissioner, responsible for Schufa, considers it legally justifiable due to the competitive situation for electricity and gas providers to share customer data in industry-wide databases. “When I see that one or the other insolvency has already occurred in the energy supplier market, mainly due to wasteful acquisition costs, then I simply have to acknowledge this legitimate interest,” said official Michael Kaiser. Representatives of other data protection authorities said Ed and SZ, on the other hand, view that storage quite critically.
“Transparent customer” “ethically questionable”
A survey of Ed and SZ among the 75 electricity and gas providers gave a mixed picture. Numerous companies reported that the credit bureaus had contacted them about the data sets. Some said they could imagine participation if all data protection regulations were observed, others said they were against it.
A spokeswoman for Lower Saxony energy provider Firstcon said the desire for a “transparent customer” was “understandable from an economic perspective, but ethically questionable.”
EnBW refuses, Vattenfall is “in exchange”
Of the three largest German energy providers with private customer businesses, only EnBW was clearly negative. E.ON, for its part, admitted to having “worked with Schufa and CRIF Bürgel on projects and checking data sets.” However, the project phase was not passed. Vattenfall said the two credit bureaus are “in an exchange about their product portfolio.” 25 companies, including energy discount companies such as Fuxx, Stromio and Immergrün, did not respond to media inquiries.
