£3m of ScottishPower’s fine to be donated to charity
Howard Lake | 29 April 2016 | News
Energy company ScottishPower is to pay a fine of £18m for poor customer service, at least £3m of which will be donated to charity.
Energy regulator Ofgem has found that the company had “failed to treat its customers fairly” and had not done enough “to protect its customers from issues that arose from the implementation of the new IT system”. The company’s actions resulted in over one million complaints being made between June 2013 and December 2015.
Up to £15m of the fine will be paid to vulnerable ScottishPower customers who were affected by the customer service issues, with the remainder being donated to charities. As yet the recipient charities have not been announced.
This is the third largest penalty levied by the regulator.
Ofgem did accept that, since it opened its investigation in November 2014, ScottishPower had improved its customer service. The average call waiting time, rate of abandoned calls and the number of Ombudsman cases have all more than halved.
Nevertheless, Dermot Nolan, Ofgem chief executive said:
“The £18m payment sends a strong message to all energy companies about the importance of treating consumers well at all times, including while new systems are put in place.”
Photo: electricity pylon in Scottish field by Stephen McCluskey on Shutterstock.com
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.