When we came to Australia in 2001 and settled in Gidgegannup we thought our electricity company was Western Power. Soon we found out: power by name but not by performance. With twice-weekly power cuts we felt Western Powerless was a more applicable moniker.

Then, with the two bushfire deaths in Tenterden in 2003, we became aware of the risks of living in a Wester Power-serviced area. That these risks still persist can be deduced from the alleged number of fires caused by Western Power infrastructure in the Great Southern during the last summer period. I have no qualms expressing my concerns about Western Power's inadequate corporate culture in relation to the prevention of bushfires by employing the term Western Arsonists.

And now for the next chapter in this saga. Ever since we installed a photo-voltaic system last August we haven't received a correct power bill from Synergy. Each time Synergy have been very helpful in trying to correct the mistakes. Finding the cause of the mistakes was another matter. Only this week was it established that Western Power purposefully dismisses our meter reading figures (we are self-readers) and forwards falsified figures to Synergy. Since Western Power is defrauding us from our rightful power feed-in income and causing Synergy to charge us for power that we haven't used, I have no hesitation characterising this type of corporate behaviour with the term Western Fraudsters.

Apparently Western Power has decided that we don't use enough power and that we can't generate more power than we use. Instead of verifying our meter readings they simply forward made-up figures to Synergy. Quite an encouragement for saving energy and investing in renewables...

Western Power have fought tooth and nail to deny their own responsibility in this drama and to lay the blame with either Synergy or us. Some of the things Wester Power staff told us or wrote to us:

Western Power is not responsible for electricity metering. Synergy is responsible for electricity metering.

Synergy is falsifying your meter reading figures because they don't like to pay you money for the electricity that you feed back into the grid.

It is you (i.e. me, the customer) who makes the mistake. You should put your import reading into the export box and your export reading into the import box.

"A fact sheet for reading the Bio Directional Meter"

"Bio Directional" meter! Where is the first wall I can bang my head against??

All the while, instead of either accepting our meter reading figures and/or veryfying them in person, Western Power applied several different but illegal estimates. All Western Power estimates should comply with the Metering Code 2005, but none of Western Power's estimates did. Hence, all estimates were fraudulent. And under the WA Criminal Code fraud is a criminal offence.

There is something very rotten in Western Power's corporate culture. No wonder their poles are rotten too.

It took a prolongued complaint procedure with the WA Energy Ombudsman to get Western Power to stop their fraud. Only recently for the first time did Western Power not fraudulently change our meter readings. We can only hope that they won't reoffend in the future.

A special note of thanks to customer support at Synergy. They have been truly brilliant in re-issuing correct bills and making sure that we didn't incur any financial loss because of Western Power's criminal behaviour. This goes to show that corporations can be run ethically.

So if Synergy can be an ethical corporation, why can't Western Power be?