Which? reveals eye-watering costs of poor customer service in energy and broadband sectors

Today we’ve published research that paints a sobering picture of dealing with customer service in two crucial sectors - energy and broadband.

Price shocks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have meant many more energy customers have needed to get in touch with their supplier.

Broadband isn’t some nice-to-have luxury, but an essential service the vast majority of us rely on to work from home, bank, shop and stream our favourite TV programmes. At a time when we’ve needed these businesses more than ever, many of them are letting us down.

The most obvious consequences of poor customer service are wasted time and money. In our survey of over 4,000 respondents, one in six energy customers said they gave up trying to get their problem sorted because of the issues they faced.

Almost a third of these people said they lost money as a result - to the tune of £137 on average. In total, we estimate that 1.2 million energy customers were left £166m worse off due to customer service issues forcing them to abandon getting their issue resolved.

The situation was equally dispiriting in the broadband sector, where one in seven gave up part way through the process. Three in 10 of these customers were financially worse off - by £93 on average. Across the whole population, we estimate 950,000 consumers were £89 million worse off due to giving up contacting their broadband provider.

These shocking figures don’t even include the small proportion of respondents who told us they didn’t even contact their energy or broadband providers due to previous bad experiences with customer service.

If we included these respondents into the calculations, this adds an additional £37 million to consumers being worse off due to poor customer service in the energy sector and an additional £6 million in the broadband sector, bringing the total estimated loss to poor customer service across both sectors to an eye-watering £298m.

One less well understood consequence is the impact on customers’ wellbeing. While our survey found that over half of respondents that experienced at least one customer service problem felt frustrated, a substantial minority of consumers experienced more severe types of emotional harm.

Around a quarter said they felt angry and a fifth told us the situation made them feel helpless. One person, whose mobile tariff was pay-as-you-go, was forced to rack up a bill of almost £70 as they were passed from department to department - a process which lasted months and caused them to feel ‘stressed, anxious, frustrated and angry’.

The issue of poor customer service in essential sectors isn’t a new one. Which? has consistently raised the alarm over poor business practices employed by some of the country’s largest providers.

Earlier this year, we named and shamed companies that had fallen well short of the levels of service customers should expect. In the energy sector, the main culprits were British Gas and ScottishPower and in the broadband sector it was Virgin Media.

We wrote to the chief executives of all of these companies, urging them to up their game, and asking them to clearly communicate the steps they will or are taking to improve. Although British Gas and Virgin Media are making improvements to varying degrees, our research shows many of their customers remain dissatisfied.

Like you, we expect these firms to take meaningful action and we will continue to monitor their performance over the coming months to see if the situation for customers gets better. Because nobody deserves to be stuck in a seemingly endless cycle of emotional turmoil and financial loss due to poor customer service.