One of Britain's biggest energy suppliers, Scottish Power, has been fined £18mn for poor customer service. The company has agreed with Ofgem to pay what is the third-largest fine in the energy regulator's history after attracting more than 1 million customer complaints between June 2013 and December 2015.
Dermot Nolan, Ofgem's chief executive said, “Scottish Power let its customers down during the implementation of a new IT system. When things went wrong, it didn't act quickly enough to fix them. This created frustration and worry for many customers, who also wasted a lot of time trying to contact the supplier by phone. The £18mn payment sends a strong message to all energy companies about the importance of treating consumers well at all times, including while new systems are put in place.” The energy company said it would pay up to £15mn to vulnerable customers, including those affected by the move to the new IT system, and pay the remaining £3mn to charity. Neil Clitherow, head of energy retail and generation, said, “In order to upgrade our old IT systems, we invested £200mn on new technology to allow us to deliver smarter digital products and services to benefit our customers.
“During the complex transition between systems we encountered a range of technical issues. This led to an unacceptable increase in complaints and reduced the quality of our customer service. We know we need to do more and we will continue to work hard to deliver further improvements, and ensure that our customer service standards return to being amongst the best in the industry.”
