Our principles and history

The Energy and Water Ombudsman Queensland (EWOQ) is a free, fair and independent dispute resolution service for people who can’t resolve a complaint with electricity, gas and water companies.

We provide this service for residential and small business energy customers across Queensland, and water customers in South East Queensland. We work directly with them to investigate and resolve complaints.

Under the Energy and Water Ombudsman Act 2006, our role is to:

  • receive and investigate energy complaints in Queensland and water complaints in South East Queensland
  • manage dispute resolution between customers and energy and water companies
  • promote our services
  • identify systemic energy and water issues.

Our history

1 July 2007: The Queensland Government established the Energy Ombudsman Queensland (EOQ) to provide a free and independent dispute resolution service for small electricity and reticulated gas customers in Queensland.

1 January 2011: EOQ became EWOQ and our jurisdiction was expanded to investigate complaints about water suppliers in South East Queensland.

1 January 2016: Our jurisdiction was expanded further to investigate privacy and credit reporting complaints.

28 February 2022: Exempt sellers operating in Queensland became eligible to join EWOQ and EWOQ's jurisdiction was expanded to investigate complaints from residential embedded network electricity customers.

Our vision

To make a positive difference to Queenslanders in a changing energy and water environment.

Our service

  • We strive to be agile and evolve with the changing landscape of our sector.
  • We embrace change and adapt to the emerging technologies and needs of our sector.
  • Our business is robust, accountable, efficient and effective.

Our customers

  • We deliver fair outcomes for consumers and businesses, providing answers and solutions which are fair for all parties.
  • We listen and respect our customers to build and maintain their trust.
  • We will ensure our teams have the skills and capacity to resolve a wide range of problems for our internal and external customers.

Our connections

  • We want everyone who needs our help to know we are here and how to contact us.
  • We educate consumers about how we can help with energy and water issues.
  • We collaborate with community groups who support our current and future customers.
  • We connect and influence our stakeholders to improve outcomes for the sector.

Our people

  • We attract, develop and retain committed professional people who are motivated by our values.
  • We will foster an empowered, agile, high performing, resilient team.

Respect: We act and interact with honesty and integrity – manners, respect and courtesy are a given.

Integrity: Our actions are consistent with our words and we demonstrate our values through our actions.

Competency: We encourage each other and seek opportunities to learn as well as share our knowledge and ideas to continuously improve ourselves and our service.

Accountability: We are each accountable and responsible for our own work, attitude and behaviours.

Excellence: We strive to be the best we can be and work hard to deliver excellent service and quality results.