MSE News: MSE tells MPs of need for urgent reform to ombudsman ‘farce’

martinsurrey

codger wrote: »

Our experience of The Energy Ombudsman Service is that either it was deliberately set up to be toothless or it tells porkies so as not to offend the energy supply companies.

Having been harassed, threatened, and wilfully messed around by a supplier we were leaving, but who claimed we owed it a large sum of money (it actually owed us) the Energy Ombudsman advised us as follows:

(1) We do not exist to consider harassment / threats / what might appear to be sustained and deliberate misconduct by a UK energy supplier;

(2) We exist only to act as a fair-play adjudicator, keen to reach an amicable all-round resolution in which everybody's nice to each other;

(c) We have no power to impose financial penalties consistent with the scale of the harassment / threats/ distress caused by a supplier because really, you need to go at your own expense to a civil court to seek that;

(d) What we can do is require the supplier to put a situation to rights and if necessary, make what it will describe as "a goodwill payment". This will usually be not more than £30, whether your life has been made sheer hell by that supplier, or not;

(e) If you do not accept the decision of the Energy Ombudsman and the 'goodwill payment' offered and go to civil court instead, your unco-operative decision will be taken into account by the court;

(f) We have no authority to strip an energy supplier of its operating licence so please don't ask us to do that.

In summary then: the Energy Ombudsman service exists to maintain a happy-clappy relationship with UK energy suppliers no matter how rogue those suppliers may be. Any censure it makes of a supplier will be polite, feeble, and -- as far as the supplier is concerned -- meaningless. The consumer must consider herself / himself very lucky to even get £30 in a goodwill payment.

Basically, then: you're on your own, sunshine, if you're seriously stuffed by a bunch of energy supply fraudsters. We can't do anything about it and we don't intend to, either. Take the measly thirty quid, shut up, and go away.

Don't suppose MSE submitted that to whichever meaningless bunch of MPs is involved here?

But what you want is an ombudsman to have the same power as a court? we already have those.

The ombudsman is there to deal with the vast majority of fairly simple complaints, give too much power to an unelected and fairly opaque organisation and who watches the watchmen?

To be honest if I considered a companies actions "made my life hell" I would have been in court long ago.

boatman

This is the ombudsman response to my case, a mobile contract claim, EE increased prices, I asked to leave, EE said no:

"The customer seeks a refund of monies paid since his cancellation request. I do not see that the company should refund all charges since the request for termination. The customer has had the services available to him during this period and appears to accept that he has made use of those services during the relevant period. He would have had to
pay something, even if he had been released from his contract and transferred his mobile number to an alternative supplier. I have not been provided with any information regarding any other deals he might have done had his termination request been accepted, or savings that he may have been able to achieve from this. I therefore find that the customer's claim for a refund of monies paid since his cancellation request does
not succeed."

I had no choice but to accept their services as they wouldn't let me leave!! So imagine my disbelief when the ombudsman who I had complained to stated 'I had appeared to accept their services', Hate to state the obvious but If i had accepted, why would I go to the trouble of making a complaint??
As for whether I could have got it cheaper, that is nothing to do with it!
Its about whether EE have acted wrongly, the ombudsman said they had but then refused to back date the claim!?

All in all a terrible piece of work by an ombudsman.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/24/arbitrator_rules_againsttmobile_rpi_guesswork/

The real joke is that had customers been told they could go to the ombudsman(EE were fined £1m for misinformation), it appears now that the help they would have received would have been useless, as can clearly be seen from my case.

Ectophile

The problem is that in most cases, the ombudsman is separate from the regulator.

The ombudsman can hear complaints from customers, but is too feeble to do anything beyond offering a bit of compensation.

Meanwhile, the regulator does have powers, but won't listen to complaints from individual customers because that's what the ombudsman is for.

boatman

Ectophile wrote: »

The problem is that in most cases, the ombudsman is separate from the regulator.

The ombudsman can hear complaints from customers, but is too feeble to do anything beyond offering a bit of compensation.

Meanwhile, the regulator does have powers, but won't listen to complaints from individual customers because that's what the ombudsman is for.

You are right in what you say, but its also worrying that for example in my case the decision made by the adjudicator with LLB(Hons) was so poor. It not only questions the process but also the people making those decisions.

martinsurrey

boatman wrote: »

This is the ombudsman response to my case, a mobile contract claim, EE increased prices, I asked to leave, EE said no:

"The customer seeks a refund of monies paid since his cancellation request. I do not see that the company should refund all charges since the request for termination. The customer has had the services available to him during this period and appears to accept that he has made use of those services during the relevant period. He would have had to
pay something, even if he had been released from his contract and transferred his mobile number to an alternative supplier. I have not been provided with any information regarding any other deals he might have done had his termination request been accepted, or savings that he may have been able to achieve from this. I therefore find that the customer's claim for a refund of monies paid since his cancellation request does
not succeed."

I had no choice but to accept their services as they wouldn't let me leave!! So imagine my disbelief when the ombudsman who I had complained to stated 'I had appeared to accept their services', Hate to state the obvious but If i had accepted, why would I go to the trouble of making a complaint??
As for whether I could have got it cheaper, that is nothing to do with it!
Its about whether EE have acted wrongly, the ombudsman said they had but then refused to back date the claim!?

All in all a terrible piece of work by an ombudsman.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/24/arbitrator_rules_againsttmobile_rpi_guesswork/

The real joke is that had customers been told they could go to the ombudsman(EE were fined £1m for misinformation), it appears now that the help they would have received would have been useless, as can clearly be seen from my case.

What would you have wanted the ombudsman to do?

You used the phone after you wanted to leave. If you'd left it in a draw and NOT used it at all they may have given you the refund.

(or got a PAK code and put another sim in the phone)

As you admit you not only had the service but actively used it, you must have expected to pay something for that usage.

The Ombudsman can only act on information they are presented, did you present them with the info of the deal you were switching to? if you had they could have quantified the difference in price, and you may have got it back.

Your problem was you presented them with a black and white question, when in reality it was a grey one.

codger

martinsurrey wrote: »

But what you want is an ombudsman to have the same power as a court? we already have those.

The ombudsman is there to deal with the vast majority of fairly simple complaints, give too much power to an unelected and fairly opaque organisation and who watches the watchmen?

To be honest if I considered a companies actions "made my life hell" I would have been in court long ago.

You're missing the bigger picture.

The watchman is already watched. So it's not the case of an unelected entity taking on the role of civil court without oversight.

As things stand, the UK energy sector is policed by the Energy Regulator. But no individual consumer has access to it. Instead, the Regulator is supplied with information by the Ombudsman service. On which basis, the Ombudsman is a watchdog that is allowed to bark but only the Regulator is permitted to bite.

Equipping that toothless watchdog with the wherewithal to do more than meekly sign off on £30 'goodwill' pay-outs from £billion rogue energy sector operators poses no threat to British justice; Ombudsman sanctions of a more penal nature than the norm can and would be subject to approval by the regulator.

As for your remark about how you'd go to court if it was you, you ought to appreciate that by virtue of education, age and/or disposition, not everyone is as sanguine about facing m'lud as you appear to be.

Meantime, the pretence of consumer protection continues on with an Ombudsman service that isn't there to achieve anything meaningful but to simply referee a debate between two sides, after which it tut-tuts about the behaviour of one and tells the other to go play nicely now.

unholyangel

boatman wrote: »

You are right in what you say, but its also worrying that for example in my case the decision made by the adjudicator with LLB(Hons) was so poor. It not only questions the process but also the people making those decisions.

Actually its kind of understandable why they came to that decision in your case and I don't think a court would have given a more favourable outcome.

As I've said on here a few times, the aim of civil law is not to penalise the wrong doer. Civil courts will look to restore you to the position you would have been in (or as near as money can achieve it) had the breach not happened. The only time betterment is permitted is where it is an unavoidable consequences of restitution (ie you cannot be compensated for your losses without incurring that betterment).

If you had evidenced a better deal you had elsewhere (maybe a cheaper price or better plan) or perhaps if you had been double billed - billed by your new company and EE for the same period then you very likely would have received a refund of sorts for that period.

boatman

martinsurrey wrote: »

What would you have wanted the ombudsman to do?
You used the phone after you wanted to leave. If you'd left it in a draw and NOT used it at all they may have given you the refund.
(or got a PAK code and put another sim in the phone)
As you admit you not only had the service but actively used it, you must have expected to pay something for that usage.
The Ombudsman can only act on information they are presented, did you present them with the info of the deal you were switching to? if you had they could have quantified the difference in price, and you may have got it back.
Your problem was you presented them with a black and white question, when in reality it was a grey one.

The ombudsman agreed EE should have released me from my contract when I requested it. EE decided to take the risk and not allow me to leave and lost, yet in financial terms they lost nothing, just held on to a customer for another 6 months.
I had no choice but to keep the contract as i needed the number, getting the PAC was not an option, they refused to cancel and issue the PAC. Are you suggesting businesses change all their phone numbers just because EE decide they don't want to abide by the rules? There were many people in the same position at the time, pretty much all of them got their back dated line rental returned. Surely given everyone was on the same contract and asked for the same thing, the result should have been consistent?

If the adjudicator had wanted more details he could have asked, part of the code they work with says that if they think they are lacking any information they can request more before making a judgement, he has actually stated in the judgement he did not have enough information but still made a judgement anyway, directly going against the code. If they wanted to be totally fair, should they not have charged me for my usage as a proportion of my contracted minutes/data used over the disputed period?

CISAS Rules:
5.2. The adjudicator has the power to do any of the following:
5.2.2
Request further evidence or documents from the customer or the company, and set time limits in which the customer and the company must provide such evidence or documents;

martinsurrey

codger wrote: »

As for your remark about how you'd go to court if it was you, you ought to appreciate that by virtue of education, age and/or disposition, not everyone is as sanguine about facing m'lud as you appear to be.

hmmm

"Having been harassed, threatened, and wilfully messed around"

"whether your life has been made sheer hell by that supplier"

Not sure how getting older would make someone more likely to tolerate such strong actions by a company.

Or were you being rather dramatic in your language? if so was it the age / education and or disposition that lead to such hysteria?

hollydays

martinsurrey wrote: »

yeah.

In other news, 75% of people who were defendants in criminal cases thought the judge was clearly biased against them (strangely about 75% are found guilty...), so clearly we need to revamp the criminal justice system!

MSE has used a poor survey to highlight a valid point.

But the consumers aren’t on trial.
Why do you say it’s a poor survey?