How to complain about your energy firm, as Ofgem names and shames worst customer service offenders

Major energy firm Eon has ‘severe’ customer service weaknesses, according to regulator Ofgem – but customers of all providers are affected.

An Ofgem review said Eon, which has 5.5million customers, had a ‘very poor’ record, with customers abandoning calls and long telephone waiting times.

The regulator added that this ‘represented a severe deterioration in standards from when Ofgem previously analysed their performance’.

However, all of the energy firms reviewed by Ofgem had some sort of customer service weakness.

Poor customer service from energy firms coincides with record high gas and electricity bills

Ofgem uncovered ‘moderate weaknesses’ at British Gas, E Gas and Electricity, EDF, Good Energy, Outfox the Market, OVO, ScottishPower, SO Energy, Utilita, Utility Warehouse and Tru Energy.

Meanwhile, it found ‘minor weaknesses’ at Bulb, Ecotricity, Green Energy, Shell and Octopus.

Many energy firm customers are unable to speak to anyone to even make a complaint, Ofgem found – and up to half just hang up in frustration. 

Ofgem said common problems at energy firms are:

• Customers left on the phone for hours 
• Energy firm staff not picking the phone up
• Slow responses to written complaints 
• Lack of information on how to make complaints
• Staff failing to handle complex calls
• Poor training for customer service staff
• High levels of customer complaints upheld by the Energy Ombudsman 

Ofgem director of retail Neil Lawrence said: ‘From being on hold for too long, to not being given clear information, or sometimes not getting through to suppliers at all, this review has highlighted that customer service is just not good enough.’

An Eon Next spokesperson said: ‘We can’t and won’t shy away from the fact we weren’t able to provide the service our customers demand and deserve for a short period of time when demand increased drastically and unexpectedly across the industry, with a trebling in the number of people wanting to speak to us.

‘But we can reassure our customers that even before Ofgem’s review we had already introduced a number of measures which are leading to improvements that will get us back to levels of service we can be proud of.’

How to escalate your energy complaint

If you cannot get anywhere with your energy company, you can take complaints to the Energy Ombudsman.

This is a free service which handles customer energy grievances around customer service, billing, switching suppliers and more.

Before you can raise a complaint with the Energy Ombudsman, you must first speak to your supplier and put in a formal complaint. 

If you do not hear back within eight weeks, or it has been eight weeks since they gave a final decision, you can go to the Energy Ombudsman to make a further complaint.

It can take months to get a decision. However, it is possible to appeal if you think the Ombudsman has been unfair. 

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk