Scottish Power customers successfully complain to Ombudsman

The energy Ombudsman has revealed big six energy supplier Scottish Power had the most complaints upheld against it during Q1 2015.

Scottish Power had 173.02 complaints upheld against it in the first three months of this year in the first set of figures on customer complaints published today by the Ombudsman.

The data reveals the number of customers per 100,000 who successfully complained to the ombudsman from the biggest ten energy suppliers, totalling 16,220. Scottish Power received more than half of the total at 8,840 complaints.

It is also almost three times as many as the next most complained about supplier, Npower, at 65.46 per 100,000.

Scottish Power has seen a spike in customer complaints during what it calls a “challenging period” following the introduction of a new £200 million billing system last year. This has already seen it top Citizens Advice’s customer complaints table with a record 488 per cent increase Citizens Advice labelled as “staggering.”

The supplier has already received a 12-day ban on sales in March this year for failing to clear a backlog of outstanding Ombudsman decisions by the end of November last year.

At the other end of the table SSE received the fewest number of successfully upheld complaints at just 4.16 per 100,000, closely followed by independent supplier Utility Warehouse with 5.7.

Scottish Power chief exeuctive of retail and generation Neil Clitheroe said: “We apologise to any customers who have experienced issues. We have worked closely with the Ombudsman to address complaints. In recent months improvements have been made and outstanding complaints have been reduced significantly.”

Utility Week exclusively reported that Scottish Power has slashed call waiting times by 75 per cent to just 61 seconds in April after answering times climbed following the billing system introduction.

“We remain fully committed to resolving outstanding issues and ensuring that no customers will be left out of pocket.”