British Gas and BT have been named and shamed for providing poor customer services in a new survey published today.
The research found 89% of people were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the way their complaints had been handled by their landline provider, while 81% felt the same way about calls made to their energy supplier.
However, the vast majority of the complaints against landline provides, up to 87%, related to calls made to BT, and 71% of complainants against energy suppliers were trying to contact British Gas.
Citizens Advice, which conducted the research through its on-line advice guide website, said too many customers of gas, electricity and telephone companies were being forced to spend long periods of time on the telephone - sometimes more than 30 minutes.
It added many people were also unable to resolve their problem with just one call.
Advertisement
While most companies provided low rate or freephone customer services numbers, people who did not have a landline could still run up huge bills or run out of credit trying to resolve problems using mobile phones, the report said.
Advisers at Citizens Advice bureaux in England and Wales faced the same problems when trying to contact utility companies on behalf of clients.
The charity claims that it could help an extra 55,000 people a year if utility firms were able to deal with a complaint within 10 minutes.
An Ipsos MORI survey carried out for Citizens Advice revealed that even though there was some improvement since its last report in 2004, utility call centres are still the worst performing.
More than 1 in 4 (27%) customers who had contacted a utility company by telephone in the last 12 months stated they were dissatisfied with the way in which their call had been handled. This compared to 16% for those who had contacted a financial services company call centre and 17% for those who had contacted a retailer.
Advertisement
Citizens Advice Chief Executive David Harker said: “I would simply like to ask the Chief Executives of all the utility supply companies, and especially British Telecom and British Gas if they could investigate the issues in our report and make improvements.”
More than 500,000 energy customers are having to wait more than six months to resolve problems with their bills, according to research by comparison firm Uswitch.
Of these, about 7% have had to wait between six months and three years – or even longer – for their disputes to be resolved.