Domestic energy supplier E.ON Next Energy Limited is to pay £5 million in compensation for poor standards of customer service, uncovered by an Ofgem review of the market.
An Ofgem ‘deep dive’ review in 2022, focussed on customer service and complaints, found severe weaknesses at E.ON Next, notably in relation to excessive call waiting times and high abandoned call rates.
E.ON Next will automatically compensate those customers most directly affected, who will receive £8 each, totalling £4 million. An additional £1 million will be paid into Ofgem’s Voluntary Redress Fund, which supports energy consumers in vulnerable situations, and other innovation and carbon emission reducing investments.
Ofgem conducted a series of Market Compliance Reviews (MCRs), examining energy suppliers’ performance in 2022. The review found that in October to December 2022, E.ON Next’s customer contact provision struggled to cope with demand and 50% of customer calls failed to successfully contact the supplier and ‘dropped off. In addition customers were forced to wait on hold for an average of 18 minutes. Over 500,000 customers were potentially affected.
Ofgem said E.ON Next had worked constructively to quickly deliver improvements. Call waiting times came down to less than five minutes and the dropped call rate fell below 10%.