Scottish Power has struggled to rank highly for customer service issues; in a recent Which? survey of the UK’s 100 biggest brands’ customer service provisions, Scottish Power came 99th, only beaten by rival Big Six energy firm Npower.
So it’s no surprise that the Telegraph has today asked, “Why is Scottish Power’s boiler service so bad?” Two people who have merely attempted to have their boiler serviced reached their wits end and contacted the newspaper to see if the publication could help them resolve their problems.
The Scottish Power boiler cover customers were helped by Jessica Forst-Williams, the Telegraph’s agony aunt, who managed to get the firm to pay these aggrieved customers any money owed.
One complainant, referred to as ML from Cumbria, had taken out Scottish Power’s Home Comfort Service. Scottish Power said they would be able to perform a boiler service within 90 days of the complainant taking out the contract and that it would contact them to make an appointment, but it failed to do so.
The customer was forced to contact the company through its Premium Rate phone line, but was unable to speak with an advisor, saying “the phone just rang and rang”. When they eventually got through and made an appointment, the engineer contacted them at the time of the appointment saying they would be unable to meet the schedule.
When Scottish Power finally got in touch with this customer, the appointment time they proposed was inconvenient. They tried to arrange a boiler service yet again, but were instead told to wait for the company to contact them.
The second complainant, RP from Gloucestershire, was paying £16.90 a month for Scottish Power boiler cover. Again, Scottish Power failed to meet its end of the deal by failing to provide a boiler service.
The customer decided to switch boiler cover and eventually received the gas appliance service they wanted.
Both complainants wanted to receive the premiums they paid back following Scottish Power’s failures to uphold its requirements. Ms Forst-Williams managed to get these premiums repaid.
Scottish Power, commenting, apologised for the fact that one of its partners had told ML that it could not cover the customer’s postcode area, saying this was inaccurate and pledging to deal with this issue internally. The Big Six energy supplier also apologise to RP for “any failings”.
The Big Six – Scottish Power, SSE, E.ON, EDF, British Gas and Npower – have consistently struggled to meet their customer service obligations, with Ofgem recently finding that 57% of domestic energy customers who complained to their energy supplier felt that their complaint was not dealt with in a satisfactory manner.
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