Extra Energy remains in bottom place for small business complaints handling

Citizens Advice says good customer service from energy suppliers saves small businesses from wasting time on problems such as inaccurate billing or contract issues. At the top of the table, SSE delivers the best complaints handling score of 11.7 per 10,000 customers. Last quarter’s best performer E.ON takes second place – but with an improved score of 17.9 per 10,000 customers.

Extra Energy delivers the worst complaints handling performance – receiving a ratio of 1231.2 per 10,000 customers. Common problems for Extra Energy business customers included not being notified when a contract was coming to an end and subsequently rolled onto a more expensive tariffs. When this happened small businesses had problems canceling their contracts.

Citizens Advice Chief Executive, Gillian Guy, said “Energy problems can cause serious setbacks for small businesses. Firms rely on a smooth service from energy suppliers to grow and develop. Problems such as inaccurate bills or contract issues can undermine these efforts and waste small businesses’ precious time and money. Citizens Advice’s small business complaints league table can help firms build up a picture of how well energy suppliers are managing problems for their business customers. All energy suppliers must step up efforts to resolve issues quickly and satisfactorily and ensure they are delivering consistently high quality service for their small business customers.”

The small business league table ranks the performance of the 15 largest firms providing energy to 10,000 or more small non-domestic customers. These business customers are defined as those who have 10 or fewer staff or a turnover of under £1.7 million. Suppliers’ scores are calculated based on the seriousness of the complaint against them and how long it took to resolve. Firms with lower complaints ratios are better at resolving complaints than those with high scores.