“It has been both astonishing and appalling in equal measure,” says Jonathan Hattersley, 66, from Cambridgeshire. He is one of thousands of British Gas customers left frustrated by Britain’s biggest energy supplier.
The gas and electricity supplier helped its parent company, Centrica, to a profit of £1bn for the first half of the year. But while the FTSE 100 company handed out millions of pounds in dividends, Hattersley lodged one of the 400,000 complaints British Gas received in 2024, on top of the 1m it recorded the year before.
Hattersley inherited the supplier after moving into a small rented flat in Ramsey in late 2023. But months after contacting British Gas to set up his account he had yet to receive a bill.
“Being an honest chap, I contacted them and got a whacking great bill, including from a period when I did not even live here,” he says.
Hattersley was presented with a £1,341.83 energy bill covering a little over seven months in his one-bedroom flat, about double the normal amount for such a property. The supplier’s customer service staff insisted it was correct, Hattersley says.
“There are many emails I have going back and forth, with astonishing claims of my energy usage in my tiny flat,” he said.
After exchanging about 40 emails with British Gas employees, he was unable to establish the basis for his inflated bill and planned to take the matter to the energy ombudsman.
His plight will be familiar to many British Gas customers. Earlier this year, Alison Woods received a quarterly bill for her two-bedroom flat that showed a 1,000% increase on a year earlier. Separately, a couple were told they owed £1,919 for a month’s worth of energy usage in their retirement flat.
The ombudsman said British Gas was the most complained about supplier, even when adjusted for the size of its customer base of 7.5 million households.
The ombudsman received 6,758 complaints from British Gas customers between July and September last year, according to the latest official figures, or 53.7 for every 100,000 customers.
This complaints ratio is almost three times higher than the figure recorded for the rival supplier Octopus Energy, which came to 18.92 per 100,000 customers over the same period.
The ratio of complaints against British Gas has more than doubled since early 2021, when the ombudsman recorded a ratio of 19.6 for the supplier.
Energy companies were inundated with complaints as a surge in wholesale gas prices in the months before and in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 caused 29 suppliers to collapse and pushed up household bills.
As the energy crisis unfolded, British Gas attempted an unprecedented mission to shift more than 7 million customers from its old billing system to a new cloud-based platform. During the same period, complaints increased but the company has denied that the new household billing system is to blame. This will, however, be cold comfort for the customers continuing to be overcharged, despite its investment in new IT.
Chris O’Shea, the chief executive of Centrica, who has faced criticism for his £8.2m pay package in 2023, admitted earlier this year that there was room for improvement.
“In our customer service last week, we answered the phone within 10 seconds. This time last year, it might have been seven minutes,” he said. “So we’ve seen material improvements in our customer service. We’ve seen material improvements in our customer retention, but there’s still more for us to go for.”
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A spokesperson for British Gas said it has invested £50m in customer service since the start of the cost of living and energy crisis, to put in place 700 more frontline advisers and extend call centre opening times.
“We know that there is more to do. We’ll continue to look at ways that we can further improve,” the spokesperson added.
Critics have noted that its complaints rate, although slightly lower than its peak in early 2023, has remained stubbornly high.
Rocio Concha, a director at the consumer group Which?, says: “Despite British Gas’s recent customer service investment, our 2024 data suggests their customer service isn’t improving dramatically.”
Concha adds: “We’ve heard from scores of British Gas customers, with many saying they’ve struggled to get a quick response to their query and others with horror stories about costly billing issues.
“In an essential sector like energy, this is completely unacceptable. British Gas must ensure they are providing the service their customers deserve and are quickly and efficiently resolving complaints.”
Hattersley dropped his plan to take his battle to the ombudsman after British Gas abruptly revised the bill within hours of being contacted by the Guardian. The supplier apologised and cut his bill from £1341.83 to just over £540. It also provided a further goodwill credit of £200 “for my awful experience”, Hattersley said.
However, Hattersley’s ordeal did not end there. Despite the energy company’s apology, he has since received another bill for the property of more than £500, despite closing his account when he moved to the Canary Islands three months ago.
After the Guardian contacted British Gas on behalf of Hattersley for a second time, the supplier offered another apology and cut the outstanding bill to just over £50. This time Hattersley received £75 as a goodwill gesture for the error.
“I am getting heartily sick of it, and not a little depressed, if I am honest,” he says.
