What’s Up With Amber Electric’s Customer Support?

For some months, there have been a bunch of complaints concerning the quality of customer support and billing services from Amber Electric. So, why has this happened?

Why Has Amber Customer Support Sucked?

The launch of the Cheaper Home Batteries Program saw sign-ups for Amber Electric, which provides households and businesses with direct access to the wholesale electricity market, increase about 5x.

Business is booming for Amber, especially with demand being pulled forward due to the May battery rebate drop; putting pressure on customer support. Added to that, around the same time the rebate went live the company was migrating their billing system to a new provider. Both hitting at once meant Amber’s customer response times blew out.

Here’s an example of a complaint from a frustrated Amber customer posted on the SolarQuotes blog; this one as recently as yesterday:

“Yes I am another disgruntled Amber client who consistently fail in their customer support– should be no support,” says Greg. “I have been with them for 5 months with no invoices and one reply to numerous emails, and no phone support. Started with all promises and but no action.”

We contacted Amber Electric to find out what’s up, and they said there was no denying the firm’s had a rough few months on customer service quality.

“Definitely a lesson learned on forecasting – we didn’t hire fast enough but we’re catching up now,” said Tim Barson; an Amber representative. “We’ve doubled the customer ops team over the last couple of months and are still hiring aggressively. Most billing issues are now resolved, and we’re investing in better self-service tools and clearer in-app info.”

You can find out more about what was going behind the scenes fueling the complaints in Neerav Bhatt’s¹ interview with Amber Electric COO Neil Luo. Note that it’s nearly two months old now.

Why Are Battery Owners Flocking To Amber?

Unlike conventional energy retailers, the company’s Amber for Batteries service enables battery owners to buy and sell their stored energy at the wholesale market price, with the potential for high feed-in tariffs during the evenings and grid events.

There are also situations where you’re paid to consume (or store) grid electricity when the grid is awash with solar exports; forcing wholesale prices into negative territory. But in such situations, it means you might pay to export excess solar energy to the grid.

While the company offers some safeguards, Amber isn’t for everyone.

Amber Electric doesn’t whack any markup on the buy/sell rates, but instead is a subscription service costing a flat $25/month.

The opportunity to extract even more value from installing a home battery has tempted many owners since Amber for Batteries launched in 2022; which combined dynamic wholesale pricing and Amber’s SmartShift battery optimisation technology.

Among those owners was SolarQuotes’ Jono, who signed up with the firm in late 2022. You can read his 6-month and 12-month reviews of the service.

That last update was more than 2 years ago. But what does Jono think now after 3 years with the service? He says his Amber experience has been very positive, although he hasn’t needed to call on customer service.

No-one would argue that reliable, responsive customer service and related communications aren’t super-important; particularly give Amber can be a hands-on affair to get maximum value from the service. It’s little wonder under the circumstances that the influx of customers getting familiar with it overwhelmed the firm, resulting in complaints.

Amber Alternatives

Hopefully Amber Electric is back on the right track.

But there are alternatives to Amber; such as the growing number of electricity plans from conventional retailers designed for battery owners. We compared those on offer from the “Big Three” electricity retailers early last month. Then there are also Virtual Power Plant (VPP) programs that we compare here.

Another alternative is joining a Virtual Energy Network (VEN).

200,000 Battery Installation Milestone Passed

On a related note, just a quick update on CHBP uptake.

Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen announced on the weekend that since the beginning of July last year, 200,000 households have installed a battery.

“This is great for those 200,000 Australian families,” he said. “It’s also good for the grid because fewer people calling on coal fire in the evening means that our grid is more reliable and prices are cheaper because coal and gas are the most expensive form of energy; and renewables are the cheapest form of energy.”

From 1 July to 31 December 2025, 184,672 home batteries were installed and commissioned under the federal rebate. Based on when the Minister provided the 200,000 tally, around 958 systems a day have been installed and commissioned since the beginning of the year. But that’s if those batteries were being installed 7 days a week — it would be an average 1,393 per working day taking into account disruptions from holidays and weekends.