And the Wooden Spoon for shoddy service goes to… British Gas

Today Money Mail can reveal the winner of our 2022 Wooden Spoon Award for poor customer service is…British Gas.

The energy giant received nearly a THIRD of the vote in our annual poll. John Lewis took silver with 13.8 percent of the vote, while BT took bronze with 13 percent.

Hundreds of readers voted and chose from a list of eight nominees that was announced in early December.

In a year of skyrocketing utility bills, you complained of long wait times on calls to speak to British Gas staff, inaccurate billing and missing government aid vouchers.

And you were outraged when you learned that profits at British Gas’s parent company, Centrica, soared last year while service levels fell.

To make matters worse, Centrica boss Chris O’Shea turned down repeated requests from Money Mail to discuss his company’s woeful service and explain how he put it right.

He also refused to accept the trophy in person – as bosses have traditionally done for our Wooden Spoon Awards, from the director of HM Revenue & Customs to the chief executives of major banks and telecom giants. So we’re forced to take a picture of Mr. O’Shea holding him.

We make no apologies for this: customer service is important and many loyal British Gas energy users will fear that Mr O’Shea’s reluctance to address the issue means he does not care enough about it.

The outrageous accolade comes a year after the company’s Homecare division won the 2021 Wooden Spoon after a deluge of complaints about boiler maintenance coverage.

A year ago, Mr. O’Shea accepted the award for a Zoom call while working from home.

Mr O’Shea – who has a reported annual salary of £875,000 excluding bonuses, benefits and shares – says: ‘There is no doubt that the energy crisis has created a difficult environment for our clients over the past two years.

“Daily Mail readers, like all our customers, are important to us and we will constantly look to improve what we do and how we do it.

“I also know that we really make a difference in people’s lives and that we are much more right than wrong.”

Queues in the call center

Many customers said they voted for British Gas because it is so difficult to reach by phone. In some cases, wait times were well over an hour.

You also mentioned that it can be difficult to get clear answers from British Gas staff when you want to request a bill or get help.

Geoffrey Matthews, from Glamorgan, has tried several times to request an invoice by telephone, but without success. “I was able to speak to one person after waiting almost an hour. After a few minutes I was cut off.’ In the end, he had to use online and a chatbot service.

Mr O’Shea says British Gas has been under tremendous pressure this winter and is working hard to answer the phone faster.

“Our call volumes have increased by more than 50 per cent this winter and we have created 700 additional UK jobs to manage this. Our hard-working colleagues will have handled 16 million customer contacts by 2022.

“Each of these rightly needs more time as our clients are seeking more help and advice than ever before and we want to help them through this cost of living crisis.”

Incorrect billing

Another major issue was billing accuracy. Margaret Wilson spent hours on the phone with British Gas after receiving an incorrect bill.

The 82-year-old from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, has seen her monthly bill almost double, despite having a loan. Only after almost a month of calling did she get her bill reduced.

In November, Money Mail revealed that some customers had seen direct debits increase aggressively with little warning. Mr. O’Shea says, “We care for and serve more than 10 million customers.

We don’t always get it right, but as a trusted brand, our customers appreciate that we are a sustainable and reliable company. When we do things wrong, we do everything we can to fix it.

“That’s why 200,000 customers joined us in the past 12 months and last year we were able to step in and save hundreds of thousands of customers from nine energy suppliers that went under.”

Vouchers are missing

Since the launch of the Energy Bills Support Scheme in October, Money Mail has had a steady stream of complaints about delayed British Gas vouchers – or households not receiving them at all.

Here’s the £66 or £67 a month essential government spending to help homes survive the price hikes this winter.

Eleanor Dolan from Dartford, Kent, says that despite numerous phone calls by mid-December, she still hadn’t received vouchers for October, November and December. “I’m at my wits end,” she says. So far we’ve helped 43 readers get a total of £3,796 after they handed British Gas a case file.

Mr O’Shea says: ‘Last year we had to set up a process in just weeks to distribute more than £2.3 billion of public money to nearly six million energy consumers in six months.

“This has been a challenging operation, but we have successfully made over 20 million of these payments and our prepayment meter vouchers have seen one of the highest redemption rates in the industry.”

John Lewis takes silver

Readers were appalled at how the retail giant re-enrolled all of its credit card customers after switching credit providers from HSBC to NewDay.

Others say standards in the department stores have dropped.

A spokesman for John Lewis says: “Last year we switched credit card providers – a complex, one-off step that has now been completed. We’re sorry we don’t get it right every time. We are working hard to provide the best possible customer experience in 2023 and beyond.”

l.boyce@dailymail.co.uk