THE "Big Six" energy companies are among the worst offenders when it comes to poor customer service, with npower finishing bottom in a poll of the UK's biggest brands.
The annual Which? survey found all of the big six - British Gas, EDF Energy,E.On, npower, ScottishPower and SSE - languishing in the bottom fifth of the table, with none scoring more than two stars for making customers feel valued.
The poll of more than 3,500 consumers gave npower a customer score of 57 per cent, replacing last year's lowest scoring company Ryanair at the bottom of the table. Second from the bottom is ScottishPower, with a rating of 58 per cent, down from joint 62nd in last year's rankings.
SSE managed a customer score of 64 per cent, giving it joint 94th position with BT and EE, while E.On and British Gas achieved 67 per cent and EDF scored 68 per cent.
Internet and telephone bank First Direct topped the table with a score of 87 per cent, achieving the full five stars for making customers feel valued and resolving complaints.
Others in the top five are Lush (86 per cent), John Lewis (83 per cent), Lakeland (83 per cent) and Waitrose (83 per cent).
However banks such as Santander and NatWest were in joint 70th position on 70 per cent, and Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC and Barclays/Barclaycard all finished joint 60th with a score of 71 per cent.
Which? executive director Richard Lloyd said: "This survey should be a wake-up call for the companies with the lowest customer scores."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article