How good is your energy company’s customer service?

This report has come at a perfect time for me.

My gas is with Scottish Power who are maybe the worst company I have ever been with. I was on the phone for 1 hour 5mins today to SP just to be cut off. But after a few tweets I finally got a phone call back, they have said sorry and given a £50 goodwill too. (I am in the middle of leaving and moving to Ebico).

My elec is with Ebcio/SSE and are very very very happy here. At the start it wasn’t so good. But now I have a direct contact “Specialist Liaison & Aftercare Customer Relations
Team Manager” and all I need to-do is drop her a e-mail and within a few hours have a reply and she is amazing. (I think my media work has helped me here as I was given her as my account manager the day after I was moaning about SSE on ITVNews)

I moved to OVO with the hope their service would be good. Which? seem to rate them highly. At first things were fine but I have not been satisfied recently. Firstly they put up my direct debit twice in six months, doubling it. When I queried this they tell me they need the account to be 1-2 months in credit, a statement I believe contradicts their terms and conditions. Furthermore they lost my actual meter readings and replaced them with wildly inaccurate estimates. I have been with them long enough to expect their estimates not to be 3 times my actual usage. As a final straw they suddenly changed my billing date, rendering my meter readings pointless.

They are franchising Government grants to companies only interested in profit then turning a blind eye if there are problems like call centres not ordering parts or overseeing ,mine replaced radiators with bleed holes on other side so were behind furniture so couldn’t be got at .This was when they knew had movement problem,They also did not replace pump that failed causing whole kitchen floor to need replacing .Refused to admit to their role.

npower.. truely appauling. the average waiting time on hold is about 45 mins and i’ve been cut off after 20mins on several occassions. I actually switched from them in August last year, waited until December for them to officially close my account and I’m still waiting for a refund of the credit on my account, despite numerous calls. I have lodged 3 complaints (unanswered), lodged a complaint in the first week of Jan with their Executive Complaints team (was told my ‘patience is kindly appreciated’), they ignored my email 3 weeks later pointing out my patience was wearing thin.

Co-operative energy….I have changed energy supplier periodically over the past few years in order to get the best deal, and never encountered problems until switching to Co-op energy in January. Despite providing transfer readings as requested in mid – January, 2 months later I am still waiting for them to send the gas reading to my previous supplier, and correct the inaccurate electricity readings they did send. The call centre tries to be helpful but does nothing; emails go unanswered and they don’t progress complaints – really regret moving to them

Its hard to understand energy companies …. I have sent several emails to First Utility about becoming a customer all have gone unanswered how the hell they are in business is beyond me if they won’t answer potential new customers, Perhaps they are doing me a favour as I dread to think what would happen if I was a customer and I had a problem. Well time to look again for a new supplier.

I have just changed from spark energy to green star energy(previous to this I was with npower) as a result of changing from npower to spark I made some small savings, however despite providing spark with readings for both gas and electricity regularly my bills remained consistent despite building up a large credit . After two years I decided enough was enough, I moved to green star. Despite the change over occurring on the 16th September spark took a further payment by direct debit on the 1st of October leaving me £912 in credit with them, they then informed me they would be paying me this back within 28 working days . It appears I am yet again a savings bank for an energy company. These people are hard to get hold of and difficult to deal with. Despite paying for my energy in advance they are reluctant to return overpayments… I am very disappointed and would not recommend this company to anyone under any circumstances

I have been with British Gas over 20 years, but finally changed to Ovo Duel Energy after reading your report and will hopefully be saving a considerable sum. The changeover was seamless with Ovo, and when I got my final bills from British Gas in March, I settled immediately. I printed off the Closed Account showing zero balances and about a week later I received an email saying I still owed an amount. So I rang Customer Services who told me it was their mistake and not to worry. I received a further email yesterday saying I owed £38.54 for electricity and, among other things telling me my credit rating could be affected. I telephoned and spoke I believe to India. I was given an explanation quoting many different figures which made no sense to me at all, but the bottom line is, apparently I do still owe this amount. Will I be glad to see the back of them!