British Gas receives £2.5 million fine from Ofgem
August 9, 2011 at 2:45 pm
British Gas has been fined the huge sum of £2.5 million by Ofgem. The fine came after Ofgem decided that the company had failed to deal correctly with a number of customer complaints.
British Gas provides power to nearly half of all the households in the UK, so the fact that it has been letting its customers down is worrying.
Ofgem said in a statement that it had found during an investigation that British Gas had “breached regulations setting standards for the way energy companies handle customer complaints”. This is now being seen as a warning from the regulator to other energy firms to take their complaints process very seriously.
As well as failing to deal with its complaints properly, British Gas also failed to provide important details to customers about how to seek help from the energy ombudsman. Ofgem claimed that the investigation highlighted the “basic failures” in the customer service, in particular when dealing with small business customers.
This comes after Ofgem warned the industry back in March that it would be taking a tougher approach to reforming the market.
British Gas claimed that, because the company has 16 million accounts, the breach was quite minor. However, a spokesman said that “we acknowledge our service fell short of what they should expect from British Gas”. He also claimed that British Gas has made a £4 million investment to meet its regulatory requirements.
People are going to expect more from the energy companies now that they insist on raising their bills so frequently, so this is a tough message from Ofgem that it is not going to take bad service lightly.
