In Hungary, customers rate their electricity distributors

The public services sector underwent widespread changes in Central and Eastern Europe. Privatization and reorganization of the electricity industry from a traditional centrally owned and operated system toward a market-based decentralized system is an important issue in Hungary. The six electricity distributor companies were privatized in 1995, and as they operate in assigned regions, consumers cannot choose their service provider. In this monopoly environment, consumer satisfaction has little impact on the distribution company's profit or market share. This environment resulted in the need to conduct regular consumer satisfaction surveys to protect consumer interests, as well as to control, supervise and indicate the improvement of the quality of service the distributor companies provided after privatization. The survey results are presented and disucssed.