Bulb to pay £1.76 million over customer failings

Bulb is to pay £1.76 million after failing to comply with Ofgem’s rules in three separate areas, including overcharging customers, over a three-year period.

In total almost 61,800 customers were affected by issues such as switching, being overcharged and errors with the priority services register (PSR) between 2017 and 2020.

Between June 2017 and April 2020 3,888 consumers were blocked from switching to Bulb because they were on restricted meter infrastructure (RMI), where there is more than one meter at a property.

Bulb did not submit the correct number of meters to the supplier that the consumers wanted to switch from, along with the switching request, which meant the process could not be completed and customers missed out on savings.

The supplier has since paid £155,500 to consumers affected by this.

More than 11,400 RMI customers were wrongly charged multiple standing charges and were overcharged by £699,000 in total. Bulb has since paid back affected customers and provided additional goodwill payments to those overcharged, totalling £675,000.

Furthermore between March 2019 and January 2020 around 46,500 vulnerable Bulb customers were removed from their network operators’ PSR following a system error which mistakenly signalled to operators that they should remove them.

This meant that some customers missed out on essential priority services, such as being given advance notice of a planned power outage. Bulb self-reported this issue to Ofgem in February this year, and has now compensated the 933 customers who were removed from the register and suffered a power outage, to the tune of £70,000.

Ofgem considers that Bulb had insufficient processes in place to review and prevent non-compliance, which contributed to the failings.

The supplier has confirmed that it has improved its governance and processes, it has compensated and refunded all customers that suffered detriment as a result of its non-compliance and paid a further £157,000 into the voluntary redress fund to support customers in a vulnerable situation.

The regulator said it has now closed the compliance engagement without taking enforcement action, taking into account Bulb’s cooperation and the steps it has taken to address its failings and the redress it has agreed to pay.

Ofgem chief executive Jonathan Brearley said: “Bulb overcharged some customers, and risked leaving vulnerable customers without access to essential network services, when it failed to comply with Ofgem’s rules.

“Our rules are designed to protect consumers, and suppliers must make sure they have the processes in place to comply with them if they are going to give their customers good service.

“Bulb has since put things right with affected customers and put processes in place to make sure it can meet Ofgem’s rules.”

The announcement comes less than 24 hours after Bulb issued research warning 12 million households could overpay their supplier by £250 this year as part of a “loyalty tax” as fixed-term deals come to an end.

In a blog published in response the supplier outlined actions it had since taken, including the introduction of new processes and training.

It added: “We pride ourselves on the quality of our systems and technology, but in these instances we needed to improve. To do so, we’ve strengthened the relevant teams, introduced new processes and training and introduced more checking and verification.

“We’d also like to express our thanks to the energy regulator Ofgem for working with us on these issues. Energy customers should know that Ofgem are working hard on their behalf.

“We’re sorry. We will do better.”