Energy Ombudsman sees complaints rise by a quarter

More than 68,000 consumers and microbusinesses contacted the Energy Ombudsman with an actionable complaint in 2019 – a 26 per cent increase on the previous year’s figure.

The number of complaints resolved increased by 25 per cent to nearly 57,000. Of those, more than 32,000 (57 per cent) were upheld in the consumer’s favour.

Billing was the number-one type of complaint handled by the service followed by payments/debt in second place and customer service in third. The proportion of complainants who were directed – or “signposted” – to the Energy Ombudsman by their supplier in a timely manner dropped from 51 per cent to 48 per cent.

The figures are from the 2019 annual energy sector report published by Ombudsman Services today (3 August).

The report also raised concerns about the Supplier of Last Resort (SoLR) process, highlighting how some customers had been negatively impacted.

It said that while the SoLR process guarantees customers will receive any outstanding credit on their account, the Ombudsman saw examples of long delays in consumers receiving refunds as well as consumers disputing the amounts that they were owed.

“It appeared that the refund claim process was heavily influenced by the administrator chosen to oversee the closure of the failed energy company”, the report said.

It added it was unable to help all consumers affected by their supplier ceasing trading as its terms of reference only allow it to consider complaints from consumers who are or who’ve been trying to be a customer of a supplier. This means that it was unable to help customers who were owed a credit balance, but had transferred away from the failed supplier before the SoLR process began.

The Energy Ombudsman says it has worked with Ofgem and Citizens Advice to draw up some minimum expectations around how suppliers should manage these situations.

Matthew Vickers, chief executive at Ombudsman Services, said: “More people are coming to us for help with an energy problem, and we’re resolving more complaints.

“This shows that there is greater awareness of our service amongst consumers – and greater demand for what we do.

“This is despite the fact that some, mainly smaller energy suppliers, don’t always tell their customers about us in the way that they should. We continue to work with individual suppliers to address these issues.

“Last year was a challenging one for the energy sector, not least due to the string of supplier failures that we saw.

“We’re pleased to have played a key role in the consumer protection landscape in energy by giving people somewhere to turn when things go wrong.”