MSE News: British Gas faces Ofgem investigation after MSE exit fees campaign

Former_MSE_Megan_F

The energy regulator is to investigate British Gas over its switching terms after MoneySavingExpert.com presented a dossier of evidence showing that some customers with fixes ending were wrongly told they would have to pay up to £60 to switch...

Read the full story:
'British Gas faces Ofgem investigation after MSE exit fees campaign'

Click reply below to discuss. If you haven’t already, join the forum to reply.

dogshome

Poor old Ofgem, late to the party yet again

Reports of BG levying Exit Fee's on customers who have followed the correct, and Exit Fee free route, at the end of fixed tariff periods have been popping up on this site for around a year.

zeupater

dogshome wrote: »

Poor old Ofgem, late to the party yet again

Reports of BG levying Exit Fee's on customers who have followed the correct, and Exit Fee free route, at the end of fixed tariff periods have been popping up on this site for around a year.

Hi

No sympathy with Ofgem here either ... a regulator which has been in existence since 2010 and the 761 employees have levied just 55 fines & redress charges for non-compliance and illegal activities to date ... that's a pathetic hit rate of 0.01 per employee per year, or 97 man years of effort per case fined/charged ... additionally, with the total value of fines levied to date being £50million and enforced customer redress of just over £200million, a departmental running cost of £100million (around £60million of which is staffing) shows a net loss to the treasury which would average £93million/year and an overall loss to the taxpaying consumer of £64million/year when customer redress is included ...

.... effectively, each of the 761 employees is making an overall loss to the country's GDP of £84,000 per year .... no wonder the UK's productivity is pathetically low compared to elsewhere ... this rate of competence & success must have the board at Centrica (British Gas's owners) with their annual revenues of over £27,000million quaking in their boots ..

Z

System

So MSE contacts Ofgem and it initiates a formal investigation. When consumers provide evidence of regulatory non-compliance, Ofgem hides behind a cloak of no comment. Might it have something to do with Ofgem's aversion to bad publicity. As far as consumer protection is concerned, it really is time that the Government established an energy consumer champion that has the powers to hold Ofgem to account for some of its very poor decisions.

MothballsWallet

Why don't we replace Ofgem (and Ofcom for that matter) with a field full of tubs of lard?

Those would do a far better job and be far more answerable.