British Gas complaints surge!

[SiHart]

I see British gas are having troubles at the moment, as the BBC reports:

British Gas has taken on 800 extra staff to deal with queries
British Gas has seen complaints from customers more than double since last year, according to Energywatch.
From October 2006 to March 2007, the firm had 21,427 complaints, most of which were from customers disputing their bills, the watchdog body said.

The firm's share of the electricity and gas market is 30%, but it gained more than 70% of the industry's complaints.

British Gas admitted that it was having problems with a new computerised billing system.

Extra staff

Energywatch said that the total number of complaints and enquiries from British Gas customers hit a record 14,001 last month.

Obviously we apologise for the inconvenience and the stress

Phil Bentley
British Gas

"It had a problem when it migrated a lot of customers' accounts from one database to another, and that's going to cause a problem for any company," Energywatch's campaigns director Adam Scorer told the BBC.

"But it has compounded the error by not having the level of customer service, and the ability to handle customer complaints, in a way that leaves customers assured that British Gas is taking their problem seriously."

British Gas said it had taken on 800 extra staff to deal with customer queries, but admitted the firm's performance was "not in a place where we want it to be" and that it "very much regretted" that customers had suffered bad experiences.

"Obviously we apologise for the inconvenience and the stress," managing director Phil Bentley told the BBC.

"I understand what it's like to get a bill that's incorrect. We apologise to those customers and we're working very hard to improve services."

The company added it had installed a new billing system, which it claimed would "greatly improve service".

The majority of complaints over the six-month period - 15,456 - were about billing, said Energywatch, on subjects including incorrect meter readings and out-of-date account details.

Refund woes

While British Gas complaints have more than doubled, most other suppliers have at least halved their complaints on a year-by-year basis.

Customers complained about delays in issuing refunds, failure to amend account details even when they had already told the firm, and money being taken from their accounts even after transferring to another supplier, according to data from Energywatch.

The firm with the next highest number of complaints, NPower, had 2,535 complaints or 9% of the total, followed by Scottish Power with 6% and Powergen with 5%.

Meanwhile EDF had 4% of complaints, while Scottish and Southern Energy had 1% of complaints.

We've been trying for the best part of three months to get a refund of an overpayment made in January, so it's nice to know that it's not just us having this problem

Can anyone recommend a better energy supplier?

Si xx

[Rob McCow]

Are British Gas still British, though? They're owned by Centrica, which I believe (though I may very likely be wrong) is a Dutch company.

[Si Hunt]

What I want to know is what's the point in having a regulatory body like OffWat (or whatever they are called) if they don't DO anything. When the wholesale price of gas fell like a stone, they warned of stiff penalties for the major suppliers if the drop in price wasn't passed on to consumers. Here we are, it's now at least six months since all this happened (and conveniently just into spring so we still have to pay full whack for the expensive heating months of winter) and we're finally getting MINIMAL reductions in price for our gas and electricity... but nothing like what we should be getting.

Why haven't the regulators done anything? Who's looking out for our interests? No-one, it seems.

Si.

[Larry]

whenn you can add at least another 3 complaints to that total as our boiler is knackered and we keeping phoning up to complain about it despite an engineer coming out to look at it..