The nation’s largest family power provider has come backside of an annual league desk for customer support as UK households proceed to grapple with punitive payments.
The client group Which? stated British Gas was the worst performer total after factoring in its personal evaluation of firms’ practices to enhance its survey of bill-payers.
The Centrica-owned agency was adopted collectively by Boost – a part of Ovo Energy – and So Energy.
British Gas obtained an total rating of 56%.
It obtained two out of 5 stars for many classes, together with accessibility – or whether or not a buyer can interact with it successfully, worth for cash and accuracy of power funds.
It obtained three stars – a median rating – for customer support total.
British Gas obtained simply over half marks for customer support and only one level out of 10 for efficiency towards its sensible meter targets.
It additionally obtained 4 out of 10 for the way it dealt with complaints, dropping factors primarily for the amount of buyer complaints it obtained per 100,000 buyer accounts within the first half of 2023 compared to different suppliers.
Boost, Scottish Power, Ovo Energy, Shell Energy, EDF Energy and E.ON Next adopted whereas Octopus Energy, Ecotricity and E (Gas & Electricity) achieved the very best buyer scores.
Octopus Energy was the one agency to realize a five-star ranking for total customer support.
The findings have been derived from a survey of simply over 9,000 family power clients in October.
In that month, the power watchdog Ofgem revealed that it was to additional tighten, from December, its expectations for power firms’ therapy of consumers, particularly these struggling to pay their payments.
Households are grappling with one other winter of above common payments following the unprecedented surge in wholesale prices that adopted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
But Ofgem has, this month, allowed a lot of suppliers to restart the compelled set up of prepayment meters.
Which? director of coverage and advocacy, Rocio Concha, stated: “With power costs nonetheless punishingly excessive and restricted probabilities for shoppers to save cash by switching suppliers, good customer support is extra necessary than ever.
“While Octopus Energy, Ecotricity and E were all named Which? Recommended Providers and scored highly for their customer service, others fell short of customers’ expectations.
“Which? is asking for any suppliers who’re falling quick on customer support to up their sport and guarantee clients are capable of contact them simply and get the solutions they want.”
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A British Gas spokeswoman responded: “This survey is behind the curve and is based on data that is up to a year old.
“Since that interval, we have focused greater than £25m of funding on bettering service and clients are seeing a distinction – this consists of hiring 700 new contact centre brokers and lengthening our opening instances.
“We proceed to be centered on customer support and serving to our most weak clients by our sector-leading £100m buyer assist package deal.”
Source: information.sky.com”