Energy customers `missing out on millions in compensation'
Which? survey finds that customer complaints about 'Big Six' suppliers have risen to four million but are not being pursued
The so-called ‘Big Six’ energy companies – British Gas, EDF, E.ON, npower, SSE and Scottish Power – received over four million customer complaints last year, according to Which?
And the consumer champion’s research says that customers could be missing out on up to £4 million in compensation by not taking their complaints to the Energy Ombudsman.
Which? conducted a customer survey and found that 40% of Big Six customers had a problem with their company. It also found that tens of thousands of complaints were still not resolved eight weeks later.
The most common problems were: billing and meter problems, including mistakes on bills; inaccurate meter readings and missing bills.
But 23% of people who had said they had a problem with their energy supplier did nothing about it.
Industry regulator Ofgem fined npower £2 million last October for failing to handle customer complaints properly. And it fined British Gas £2.5 million in July for the same offence.
There was some good news for energy customers today though with an announcement from EDF Energy that it is cutting gas prices by 5%. This follows recent price cuts by smaller players Co-operative Energy and Ovo. It's now expected that the rest of the Big Six will follow suit.
If you have complained to your energy company but you feel your complaint hasn’t been dealt with satisfactorily, you should contact the Energy Ombudsman.
More: Compare energy tariffs with lovemoney.com | Four big gas and electricity scams to avoid this winter | Gas costs, not green measures, to blame for energy prices
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It's also like the airline being told not to add credit / debit card fees on to the price for tickets. There is a free way to pay. In the end who benefits? No-one. The card charges will just be added to the ticket price, and the "free method of payment benefit" disappears. So, no-one wins, but some people lose. In fact, the airline wins, as they now get extra from those people who would have had the free payment method before.
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My first reaction on hearing the news that energy companies had received such massive fines and the source of my feelings of disquiet at customers being encouraged to apply for compensation is: won't this push prices up even more? Or is that too simplistic a view? No doubt Ofgem monitor such possibilities but, as demonstrated in the last round of price increases, they evidently have no influence in that area. I have a problem with the whole issue of compensation. Last year I paid off a very small mortgage of £16,000 which I had taken out for an eight year period, this being the cheapest way to borrow the money. I am now being bombarded with emails and phone calls suggesting that I was mis-sold PPI and should be retrieving my payments. This is unethical in my book; I was not forced to pay the PPI as a condition of the mortgage and, of course, the companies so keen to help me are like ambulance-chasers, leaping on the bandwagon. The result of all this greed is likely to be a return to bank charges on all current accounts which affects most the poorest in society. I know that the two situations are not comparable but the end result is similar in that everybody pays more to fund the minority, some of whom are just opportunistic.
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What I would like to know is how the accuracy of my electric meter is affected when it is near to the end of it's certified life. The meter is a mechanical wheel with 2 counter style dials. There is "Landis and Gyr" in the top left corner and at the bottom is L85FB.
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12 January 2012