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Latest issue Nov 27, 2024


ENERGY OMBUDSMAN: BRITISH GAS THE MOST COMPLAINED ABOUT ENERGY COMPANY SO FAR IN
2024

Once again in 2024, British Gas tops the list as the energy company with the
most complaints escalated to the Ombudsman – according to their latest published
data.

The Energy Ombudsman recently published their complaints data for July to
September 2024 (Q3) and for the third quarter this year British Gas tops the
list as the energy company with the most complaints escalated to the Ombudsman
by British Gas customers.

In fact, at 53.7 escalated complaints per 100,000 customers during this
reporting period, their escalated complaints figures in the last quarter are now
over twice that of the average of their competitors at 25 complaints per
100,000*.

It's notable that they have overtaken OVO for the last 3 quarters, since OVO
themselves were fined £2.4m by Ofgem just two months earlier for customer
complaints failings.

The best performer for a second quarter in a row is Utilita Energy with 12.2
escalated complaints per 100,000 customers. British Gas customers are over 4
times more likely to have to complain to the Ombudsman than Utilita customers.

It's important to remember that only a percentage of complaints get escalated to
the Ombudsman. Customers have to choose to do this. The numbers of complaints
raised directly with energy suppliers themselves are always much higher.

We've collated the complaints data for the last year (last quarter of 2023 and
first three quarters of 2024) and the chart below shows how the suppliers rank
against each other. The trend of British Gas being the outlier this year looks
set to continue into Q4.

A Flourish chart

Editors Note: Of particular note to the Bad Energy editors is that British Gas
has been shown to have the most obscured complaints process on their website
compared to their competitors**. They are the only energy company not to allow
complaints to be submitted by email and the only company who doesn't provide a
simple complaints page with clear contact information within a couple of clicks
from their home page. Customers have to go through a multi-step process just to
find out how they can complain to the company.

In our view, if British Gas were not actively engaged in making the process of
raising a complaint harder than any of their competition, their complaints
numbers – including the numbers escalated to the Ombudsman – would be even
higher.

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ABOUT THE OMBUDSMAN'S DATA

The Energy Ombudsman publishes data about complaints escalated to them each
quarter. Only a small fraction of customer complaints are escalated to them, so
the real volume of complaints for each supplier will be much higher.

The Ombudsman's data will lag behind complaints data which energy companies
themselves report to Ofgem directly, because customers can only escalate
complaints to the Ombudsman after first raising a complaint with the supplier
directly.

Once a customer has reached a deadlock with their supplier, and/or 8 weeks has
elapsed since they raised the complaint, they can then escalate it to the
Ombudsman. It's those escalations that we're reviewing here. This means that
Ombudsman's data could represent complaints that were originally raised with the
suppliers themselves a number of months ago.

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*This is the average of the other energy companies provided in the data, namely:
OVO Energy, EDF Energy, E.ON Next, Octopus Energy, Scottish Power, Utility
Warehouse and Utilita Energy. The Ombudsman only publishes this quarterly data
for energy companies with over 1m customers.

** Competitors with over 1m customers as reported in the Q3 Ombudsman complaints
data.

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