Energy Ombudsman: British Gas the most complained about energy company so far in 2024

The Energy Ombudsman recently published their complaints data for July to September 2024 (Q3) and for the third quarter this year British Gas tops the list as the energy company with the most complaints escalated to the Ombudsman by British Gas customers.

In fact, at 53.7 escalated complaints per 100,000 customers during this reporting period, their escalated complaints figures in the last quarter are now over twice that of the average of their competitors at 25 complaints per 100,000*.

It's notable that they have overtaken OVO for the last 3 quarters, since OVO themselves were fined £2.4m by Ofgem just two months earlier for customer complaints failings.

The best performer for a second quarter in a row is Utilita Energy with 12.2 escalated complaints per 100,000 customers. British Gas customers are over 4 times more likely to have to complain to the Ombudsman than Utilita customers.

It's important to remember that only a percentage of complaints get escalated to the Ombudsman. Customers have to choose to do this. The numbers of complaints raised directly with energy suppliers themselves are always much higher.

We've collated the complaints data for the last year (last quarter of 2023 and first three quarters of 2024) and the chart below shows how the suppliers rank against each other. The trend of British Gas being the outlier this year looks set to continue into Q4.

Editors Note: Of particular note to the Bad Energy editors is that British Gas has been shown to have the most obscured complaints process on their website compared to their competitors**. They are the only energy company not to allow complaints to be submitted by email and the only company who doesn't provide a simple complaints page with clear contact information within a couple of clicks from their home page. Customers have to go through a multi-step process just to find out how they can complain to the company.

In our view, if British Gas were not actively engaged in making the process of raising a complaint harder than any of their competition, their complaints numbers – including the numbers escalated to the Ombudsman – would be even higher.

About the Ombudsman's data

The Energy Ombudsman publishes data about complaints escalated to them each quarter. Only a small fraction of customer complaints are escalated to them, so the real volume of complaints for each supplier will be much higher.

The Ombudsman's data will lag behind complaints data which energy companies themselves report to Ofgem directly, because customers can only escalate complaints to the Ombudsman after first raising a complaint with the supplier directly.

Once a customer has reached a deadlock with their supplier, and/or 8 weeks has elapsed since they raised the complaint, they can then escalate it to the Ombudsman. It's those escalations that we're reviewing here. This means that Ombudsman's data could represent complaints that were originally raised with the suppliers themselves a number of months ago.

*This is the average of the other energy companies provided in the data, namely: OVO Energy, EDF Energy, E.ON Next, Octopus Energy, Scottish Power, Utility Warehouse and Utilita Energy. The Ombudsman only publishes this quarterly data for energy companies with over 1m customers.

** Competitors with over 1m customers as reported in the Q3 Ombudsman complaints data.