Our campaigns on loyalty and energy reap rewards
TWO longstanding campaigns by The Mail on Sunday – highlighting price discrimination against loyal customers and service problems at energy giant ScottishPower – have borne results.
Charity Citizens Advice confirmed on Friday it had lodged a ‘super-complaint’ with the Competition and Markets Authority. This calls for the regulator to bring to an end the persistent practice of companies penalising loyalty, often by offering new customers identical deals but at cheaper prices. It is an issue we campaigned on last year following a sustained ‘broken loyalty’ special investigation.
Citizens Advice’s report identifies a number of key areas where loyalty discrimination is either rife (home insurance, broadband and energy supply) or prevalent (mortgages, mobile phones and savings accounts). It has calculated loyalty is costing customers £4 billion a year – £877 per household – with 80 per cent of people penalised for misguided loyalty in at least one product area.
The regulator now has 90 days to respond to the complaint. It can either reject it or outline possible remedies.
Separately, energy regulator Ofgem has confirmed it has put a number of suppliers on watch over their poor handling of cus- tomer complaints. Failure to respond satisfactorily to this ‘compliance engagement’ could ultimately result in the regulator imposing fines.
Among those suppliers on the regulator’s radar is ScottishPower, a company whose poor complaints handling triggered a major probe by The Mail on Sunday in late 2014 and an eventual £18 million fine from Ofgem.
Only last week, we reported on a complaint from a ScottishPower customer who took advantage of a cut-rate tariff, only to be told that it was a mistake and should never have been offered. She went on to describe the energy giant as ‘mind-blowingly inept’.