Surge in British Gas complaints

British Gas has seen customer complaints more than double since last year, according to Energywatch. From October 2006 to March 2007, the firm had 21,427 complaints, most of which were from customers disputing their bills.

Karen Darby, founder of the price comparison service, SimplySwitch.com, commented: “This level of customer dissatisfaction is unacceptable for such a large and well-established company.

“We understand that British Gas implemented a new billing system last year, updating technology that dated back to 1985. While this will lead to more accurate billing eventually, the switchover should not have been allowed to cause this much disruption. Customers are suffering unnecessarily.

“Now that switching suppliers is so easy, people won’t stick with a provider that provides poor customer service. More than a million customers left British Gas last year, a number that will increase again unless the company is able to rectify its problems.

“Following price cuts last month, British Gas actually offers some of the best value tariffs in the UK. However, if they can’t send out accurate bills, their customers won’t feel the benefit.

“British Gas’ online tariffs are currently amongst the most competitive in the UK market. As with all online tariffs, customers take their own meter readings and enter them over the Internet, thus avoiding the problem of over-estimated bills.

“We always advise customers with Internet access to compare online tariffs. They are usually the suppliers’ cheapest deals and, because customers take their own readings, the bills are more accurate.”

Despite having just a 30% share of the electricity and gas market, British Gas gained more than 70% of the industry's complaints

The firm with the next highest number of complaints, NPower had 2,535 complaints, or 9% of the total, followed by Scottish Power with 6% and Powergen with 5%.

Meanwhile EDF had 4% of complaints, while Scottish and Southern Energy had 1% of complaints.