Our flagship publication, Consumer Reports , has the mission of evaluating products and services and giving consumers advice about purchasing decisions. There are many consumer rights and protections that are necessary to make a competitive retail electric market work effectively for residential customers. Standardized disclosures are one such necessary ingredient. One of the basic tenets of economics is that competitive markets require full information. Disclosures facilitate informed customer choice.
Information is especially critical in new competitive markets such as that for electricity.
Consumers have never had the opportunity to shop for electric service before and the ordinary household will not have access to a market analyst, economist, accountant and lawyer to advise them on their purchases as a large industrial customers will. Consumers make choices based on a whole host of criteria, price being one, and often the most important, as the recent focus group results have shown. Consumers also consider safety, reliability, environmental impact, aesthetics, and social issues. What we mean by price is obvious. In a general sense contract terms include financing, cancellation, recourse for poor service, late payment fees, and a clear understanding of the service package.