Energy companies are hit by 500% surge in complaints since 2012
CUSTOMERS made a record number of complaints about energy companies last year, a watchdog has reported.
There were around 500 per cent more complaints to the Energy Ombudsman in 2015 than in 2012 – 65,168 compared with 11,283.
The figure jumped by nearly a quarter in a year, up from 52,937 in 2014. Eighty-three per cent of complaints were about billing, specifically late and inaccurate household bills, the independent adjudicator said.
Nine per cent were related to difficulties when transferring from one supplier to another. Energy companies have come under pressure to cut their bills in line with sharp falls in wholesale prices of electricity and gas.
Wholesale electricity prices are down by around 23 per cent in the past year while wholesale gas prices have fallen by 37 per cent.
But there are signs the companies could be improving, because complaints in the last three months of 2015 fell by nearly a third on the same period in 2014 – 10,896 compared with 15,370.
Chief ombudsman Lewis Shand Smith said: ‘Energy complaints rose by nearly a quarter over the course of last year as customers continue to be more vocal about their discontent with suppliers.
‘Towards the end of the year, we’ve seen some suppliers take some encouraging steps, particularly when it comes to improving their billing processes, but there’s still more that can be done.’ The Energy Ombudsman investigates serious complaints between customers and suppliers, where they have been in dispute for more than eight weeks and have reached deadlock.
A full breakdown of complaints across the year will be published next month, but the ombudsman’s latest figures, for the third quarter of 2015, showed Scottish Power received the most complaints.
Customers complained about it 4,554 times, up by 27 per cent on the previous quarter.
Npower was second with the number of complaints rising by 24 per cent to 3,581 while British Gas was third with 1,305 complaints, a 1 per cent fall on the previous quarter.