British Gas is to pay out £1.1m to compensate customers for breaching rules governing missed appointments.
The country’s largest supplier of energy to households and businesses was required by the industry regulator to agree customer payouts but not pay a fine as it flagged the failures to Ofgem itself.
Around 12,000 mostly business customers were affected by the breaches, the watchdog said.
They covered either missed appointments or instances of the company’s contractors arriving late.
Under the compensation package, those failed were to get up to £90 for each appointment. The figure includes an extra £30 on top of what the industry safeguards demand.
It is the company’s second regulatory failing this year. It was forced to pay £9.5m in January for billing issues.
Commenting on the latest payout Martin Crouch, Ofgem’s senior partner for improving regulation, said: “British Gas did the right thing in coming forward to report this issue, and has since improved its processes to make sure that, when appointments are missed or not kept on time, all customers receive the compensation they’re entitled to.”
“It’s crucial that suppliers keep appointments on time, and make amends when things go wrong.”
A British Gas spokesman said: “We discovered the error last year and reported it to Ofgem.
“We have apologised to the affected customers, given them all compensation and an additional goodwill payment.
“In April this year we introduced new system checks to ensure this can’t happen again.”
Source: Sky