Water heater wars raged for 15 years: Roseman

When I wrote my first column about water heater rentals in 1999, I knew little about the business.

Since then, Ive watched many consumers fooled by fast-talking salespeople into replacing a perfectly good water heater with a slightly newer one that had higher monthly rental fees.

Uniformed representatives would show up at the door, making people believe they were dealing with a current supplier. They talked about benefits of switching such as energy efficiency, safety and government rebates which often turned out to be minor or non-existent.

Rental companies would install water heaters during the 10-day cooling off period and threaten hefty removal fees if clients changed their minds. Older water heaters would be recycled, so that customers could not get them back if they tried to cancel their contracts right away.

But after 15 years of following abusive practices in this industry, I finally see signs of progress.

The federal Competition Bureau reached a deal this week with National Home Services, a subsidiary of Just Energy, to pay a $5 million penalty and $500,000 toward its investigative costs.

The agreement arose from thousands of complaints about NHS sales agents misleading customers about their identity and purpose of their visits. It also requires the payment of $1.5 million to all current customers obtained by National Home Services through door-to-door marketing since July 2008.

Its not every day we get a consent agreement that provides restitution to customers, Competition Bureau spokesman Phil Norris said in an interview.

Here is a recap of the water heater wars for those who didnt have a front-row seat for all the antics.

1999: Ontarios two regulated gas utilities, Enbridge Gas and Union Gas, spin off their water heater operations to deregulated entities they own. This opens the door for independent contractors to sell and service water heaters.

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Water heater wars raged for 15 years: Roseman