Sharp rise in water complaints

Complaints in the water retail market have risen for the second successive year, a report by CCWater has found.

In the report released today (3 July) the water watchdog criticised the poor performance of the market’s biggest retailer, Water Plus, along with Clear Business Water and Everflow.

All three companies had a 20 per cent increase in written complaints during 2018-19.

Water Plus, the worst performing company, saw a 70 per cent increase in the number of complaints it received, based on the number of customer supply points.

CCWater investigated 21 complaints against the retailer  – seven more than any other company- as it struggled to resolve billing problems.

The company has since implemented an action plan after coming under pressure from the watchdog to improve, but CCWater says this needs to deliver “substantial improvements” in the coming year.

Clear Business Water meanwhile was the worst performer for complaints made to CCWater while Everflow was criticised in the report for its slow response to customers.

Companies with a mixed performance include Yorkshire Water Business, which performed “relatively poorly” on written complaints but it emerged best performing larger retailer for complaints received against it by CCWater.

SES Business Water was a poor performer for complaints CCWater received against it, but reported a lower proportion of written complaints directly from customers – a point which CCWater says has led it to question the validity of the company’s complaint numbers.

Meanwhile for the companies who were around or just below the industry average on one or both complaint
measures, CCWater says it will continue to monitor their performance.

Castle Water, Pennon and Wave, while showing some improvements, remain a “cause for concern” with either the number of complaints or the increase in complaints CCWater has received against them.

Companies such as Business Stream, Affinity for Business, Water2Business and the companies in Wales – Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water and Hafren Dyfrdwy – were among the best performers.

First Business Water and the Water Retail Company also only received one written complaint, while many of the other smaller retailers did not report any.

Robert Light, chair of CCWater, said: “Choice promised to improve service for business customers, but instead we are seeing complaints rising while customer satisfaction levels head in the opposite direction.

“Poor performing retailers and water companies have had long enough to iron out these problems and the excuses won’t wash with us or customers.

“We want to see the regulator take action where companies are not fulfilling their obligations.”

Responding to the report Andy Hughes, chief executive of Water Plus, said: “Our significant investment we made in 2018 in our systems, processes and people, including increasing the number of people we had in our call centre, continues to make a difference this year, reducing delays for customers, and enhancing the services for our new and existing customers.

“We’ve seen substantial progress as a result of this, including reducing complaint levels with further analysis of root causes to further improve our services and prevent future complaints – and we’re confident we can build on this, doing more on this area, continuing our efforts to help our customers.

“These figures are historic and the first quarter of this financial year has seen a drop of around 40 per cent for complaints, which shows the work we’re doing is continuing to make a difference for our customers.

“For us, one complaint is one too many and we’re driving these down through our investment, focus and the efforts of all our people.”

“As we’ve worked through and cleansed some historic account activities in the last year, we unfortunately expected – and planned for – complaints to increase in the short-term and then reduce and we’ve also been working closely with CCWater, providing them with regular updates on the significant progress we’ve made.

“We’re also actively working with wholesalers and other retailers to make the market work better for customers, helping speed up resolution of complex issues as well as working across our industry to improve data.”

Chris Earle, chief executive of Clear Business Water, said:“The CCWater report demonstrates that companies who are successfully switching customers through competition are receiving more complaints than incumbent suppliers who inherited large customer portfolios. New entrants are unearthing historical issues around data held within the central systems which causes a discrepancy between the actual bills and historical bills. The root cause of the issue is the data provided by the old supplier to the new one. We believe to accurately and fairly measure comparative performance between suppliers, CCWater should group complaints by switched and non-switched customers to enable better targeting of improvement measures.

“When a customer is transferred to a new supplier, this often brings to the surface longstanding issues such as incorrect tariffs and meters that have not been read for a number of years. The impact of this incorrect data may ultimately lead to customer dissatisfaction as their billing is not in line with their expectations.

“Despite the very challenging market conditions, out of 13,607 supply points that have transferred to us, only 31 customers (0.2 per cent) have raised a dissatisfaction to CCWater in the measured period.

“We recognise that wherever customers have an issue we need to work even harder to provide a better level of service so that we can be successful in a competitive market. We want all of our customers to have a great experience and we are working hard to fix the data issues in the market. Ultimately this will be key in improving the customer experience.

“We are encouraged that our continued efforts have led to our complaints in the final quarter of the measured period showing a reduction of 68 per cent compared to the first 9 months of that period. We will continue to work with the industry to drive a better experience for all customers.”

Meanwhile Josh Gill, managing director of Everflow, said: “It is great to see the progress that we have made, as highlighted in the 18/19 report, showing that we have gone from 10th best to 6th best in half a year.

“We are also pleased to announce that we have seen continued improvement evidenced in Q1 of 2019 and are well ahead of average benchmarks pre-market opening so we look forward to next year’s report.

“However, we are disappointed with how CCW has chosen to represent us given where we are currently positioned in the table. Especially considering their acknowledgement to us that the methodology, which favours incumbents over companies who target SMEs, could have been improved.

“Ofwat is calling for the market to engage more with SMEs and we need to make sure that all public facing reporting provides accurate and reliable information for SMEs looking to switch.”