Complaining to Energy Ombudsman: Is it worth it?

backfoot

chanz4 wrote: »

a major supplier, DNO is the local distiribution for electric

.....and the relevance is to what?

Have you posted this on the correct thread? I am struggling to see the context.

DirectDebacle

scottishpower_company_representative wrote: »

Hi Keiran,

As you have already been issued with a letter of deadlock I may be unable to assist further, however if you e-mail me with your details I can review the case for you and if I can help I will.

For your information the "keep the complaint open for 10 days" refers to the complaint within ScottishPower and this is as long as we will hold debt follow-up (if applicable). You have 6 months to contact the Energy Ombudsman if you wish.

My e-mail address is [EMAIL="onlinecomplaints@scottishpower.com"]onlinecomplaints@scottishpower.com[/EMAIL]

Kind regards

Graeme @ ScottishPower

In addition to CingO excellent post:

An actual deadlock letter may be desirable but is not necessary.

The Ombudsman requires that if a complaint has not been dealt with to the customers satisfaction or it has not been resolved after 8 weeks, they will consider it.

In addition the complaint must have been made to the supplier within 1 year of it coming to the notice of the customer. The customer has 9 months from the date of complaint to take it to the Ombudsman.

Complaint procedures in respect of energy suppliers are cumbersome and not very customer friendly. Choices are in the main restricted to the supplier, Consumer Direct and the Ombudsman Service.

County Court (Small Claims Division) are a last resort. All other alternative means of resolution, including Ombudsman Services, will have to be exhausted before a county court claim is made. The decision letter or if the Ombudsman refused to examine your claim, the refusal letter will be sufficient for the court, together with evidence of non-resolution from the supplier, that you have tried alternative means of resolution.

Ofgem regulate the Ombudsman Service (Energy). Both receive the bulk of their funding from the energy suppliers. They claim to be independant and unbiased.

Decisions by the Ombudsman are binding on the supplier but not on the customer. The customer has 28 days to accept the decision. After that the decision and any compensation is withdrawn.

Whether or not it is 'worth it' to submit a complaint to the Ombudsman is entirely subjective.

They can refer issues to Ofgem. I have no idea how often this occurs.

If you have a complaint that appears to be systemic and likely to affect the bulk of other customers of your supplier then irrespective of whether or not any compensation is awarded a finding of a system failure could be useful.

Such a finding could be forwarded to Consumer Direct for onward transmission to Ofgem. The customer could also forward the evidence and Ombudsman finding direct to Ofgem. Hopefully Ofgem would then have three notifications of a suppliers(s) system problem and may decide to investigate.

There is limited scope for individuals to bring wider problems to the attention of the regulator. Direct Debit issues as described on various threads are an example and may be the exception to the Ofgem policy of not accepting complaints from individual customers.

Putting complaints before the Ombudsman in respect of direct Debit notifications (SLC. 27), E.On zero spring balance policy and EDF shambolic system would in my opinion be worthwhile forwarding to Ofgem. There is nothing to lose but it requires time and effort and no guarantee Ofgem will take heed.

In terms of awards to customers made by the Ombudsman compensation is different to reparation. If a suppliers behaviour has cost you £50.00 and the suppliers denies this and the Ombudsman finds in your favour and awarded the £50.00, you have not been compensated. It is merely that which was rightfully yours and taken from you has been returned.

Compensation can be sought and made up in part by submitting a reasonable claim for costs.

As a rough guide a county court will not usually question time involved by a layperson in case preparation to costed at around £10.00 p.h. A complicated case may stand a higher rate.

In addition where financial loss has been involved a court can award interest at a gross rate of IIRC 8.00% p.a. calculated daily from the date the loss first occured. Include a claim for interest, if applicable, in your submission to the Ombudsman.

These costs can be added to the amount you feel is reasonable compensation for the worry/stress/inconvenience the supplier has caused you.

Quite simply, if you don't ask you don't get.

cumfycumfy

cing0 wrote: »

Fill in the ombudsman's form and put a summary of the complaint in the box provided. Attach with it your full complaint and evidence and email the lot with the signature form scanned after signing it.

I would love to do precisely this, but where is their email ?

I had an online form with 2000 characters limit and no way of attaching documents.
They then didn't contact me for further info and then implied I had not followed Scottish Power complaint procedure, which I had and would have demonstrated if they gave me a damn email to send the evidence to.:silenced:

Terrylw1

Just by raising one you hit the supplier with a £350 charge hence its in their interests to resolve it before then to save paying this and the compensation on top.

The figures for these complaints are produced monthly in a set of reports I regard as pretty pointless and badly created. Being near the bottom affects their star ratings and if its good for anything, directors don't like their bonuses affected by these things so the operational management below spring into action out of self preservation (the law of the commons is very relevent here).

It also means you are not alone in pushing for resolution and a supplier is less likely to try it on in front if the ombudsman.

Its all tip of the iceberg stuff though, and monitoring & deciding levels of service based on thus is rubbish. Unless we know what's underneath it...its just the ombudsman justifying their existence.

Terrylw1

jalexa wrote: »

Not sure if you are making a general or a specific point but, based on discussion with my current supplier (Edf), I *believe* subsequent to the transfer they obtained from a national metering registry (pls provide the likely actual name) actual previous consumption.

So regardless of the "how and when" the end result is the "transfer of history". And there are two serious points I would like to make. Firstly I was not aware that the number now being used as a future consumption assumption in calculations was not the number I compared and switched on and secondly it is not reflective of specific energy efficiency measures I have adopted. Or the weather.

As a matter of "strong suspicion", (unfortunately I'm not privy to "fact") regular customer reads do not appear to much change the "assumption", though regulations require the use of the most recent information. Edf will have big egg on their face come my April review date.

Is it an "EO issue"? Well I'm keeping my powder dry for a more focussed contravention of Licence Conditions.

As said on the other thread, they do transfer a 12 month history from their Data Collector, not their own records.

The customer reads are key to this. If a supplier gets a customer read, they are supposed to pass it go the Data Collector for validation. This tends to happen after they have used it to bill or add it to a consumption history if no bill is produced.

It was common before SAP for legacy systems to only do this when a bill was produced hence it doesn't get sent off and the Data Collector can't attempt to vlidate it to add it to their consumption history and send it back to the supplier.

Another problem has always been where the Data Collector fails it as they don't like it. They send tht to the supplier who tends to think "I've used it, sent it go them so my jobs done" but they should contact the Data Collector to get it validated...and this has been a poor data issue since dereguation with customer readings.

jalexa

Terrylw1 wrote: »

The customer reads are key to this. If a supplier gets a customer read, they are supposed to pass it go the Data Collector for validation. This tends to happen after they have used it to bill or add it to a consumption history if no bill is produced.

That is an interesting point. Even Edf have managed to build an accurate projection for electric, possibly using the mechanism you describe.

Gas projections, OTOH are a shambles. ISTM the advisers don't know or don't have access to the projected consumption but have a tool to calculate it, I think from the calculated monthly payment. Not surprisingly the adviser's calculated projection is wrong because the system calculated monthly payment is wrong:rotfl:

Clearly Edf need a "Twitter table". E.ON have one and its quite accurate.:T

keiran

Hi
My last post seems to have been deleted, no doubt because of the extremely abusive and highly deserved comments I made on the energy ombudsman ( EO)

I received the final decision about my complaint from the EO a year after the initial problem with Scottish Power. The analysis was both facile and highly partial.

The simple answer to my question is that it is NOT worth complaining to the EO. I now understand that Ofgem asked the energy companies to set up an ombudsman service....unsurprisingly this service is highly geared towards the interests of the energy companies. So there hasn't been creeping regulatory capture... the system was designed in this way from the outset.

The EO will only look at whether the energy company followed its own (the energy company's) complaints procedure and awarded its own (the energy company's) low level of award in case of any breach. There is no reason why an energy company would not follow its own , highly partial, guidelines...

The energy company does have to pay a referral of £375. So it may be worth complaining to the EO so that it suffers this loss ( though they'll get it back from all of us with higher tariffs, of course). My experience was that even after I'd lodged a complaint with the EO, it was a battle to persuade it to take on the complaint.

As someone mentioned above, the EO service and staff are arrogant. It has followed the usual corruption that occurs when a service originally set up to serve customers becomes, instead, self serving and self aggrandising, with a plethora of policies and guidelines made up by idle hands to protect its domain.

It was hard work complaining to the energy company, but even more of a painful fight with the EO.

So if you complain to the EO, keep it short and don't spend too much time/effort on it, aiming so that the energy company will have to pay the £375 referral fee and that you MAY get a few quid.

Should there be a government department monitoring "services" such as the EO???