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back to article EE slapped with £2.7m fine by Ofcom

EE has been slapped with a £2.7m fine by regulator Ofcom for overcharging tens of thousands of customers. A year-long investigation found that EE made fundamental billing mistakes, overcharging 40,000 customers a total £250,000. Ofcom said EE’s "carelessness or negligence" contributed to these billing errors. It follows …

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  1. Chrissy

    IPA 2016 (not the Ale!)

    This bodes well for EE meeting their responsibilities within the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.... if they can't find the 6095 people who phoned 1 - one!! - specific number, how are they going to find 12 months of web-surfing data when GCHQ come knocking???

    1 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: IPA 2016 (not the Ale!)

      If only Ofgem would properly fine CoopEnergy for its horrendous billing mistakes (mine personally was £153 in their favour, I had to sort it myself), but then Ofgem have just given CoopEnergy the contract to take over GBEnergy Customers, so now CoopEnergy can't be seen to fail, as it means narcissistic Ofgem would be seen to be failing too.

      A little known fact is Ofgem don't actually regulate the choice (if its fit for purpose) and rollout of new Billings systems (how it affects customers), which is just crazy in 2017.

      Without understating it, Ofgem is the most utterly f'in useless Regulator ever. It spends its day patching over the cracks, of a so called 'competitive system' (it isn't) with zero customer service levels, all faked/talked up by Ofgem.

      Hence the term #Fuseless, with any reference to @ofgem on twitter, as in fuse - electricity, F'in useless. The is so much wrong with Ofgem you write a book on it, so I won't here.

      0 1 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: IPA 2016 (not the Ale!)

        Wasn't the Coop problems caused (or at least made a lot worse) by Which? having the idea that the best way to improve the energy market was to get many thousands of customers all to switch to the same small provider at the same time

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        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: IPA 2016 (not the Ale!)

          Wasn't the Coop problems caused (or at least made a lot worse) by ..... many thousands of customers all to switch to the same small provider at the same time

          No. That did happen at Extra Energy, and Ofgem have an open investigation that may result in fines (although Ofgem prefer to let small suppliers off the hook as far as possible, because their belief is that "Big is Evil").

          Coop's problems were mainly down to a botched CRM upgrade, and similar outcomes have occurred at almost every energy company that has done the same (British gas, npower, Scottish Power, EDF and others). Of late Ofgem has taken to issue big fines and sales-bans to companies that end up on the customer service naughty step.

          The reason these problems occur so commonly in energy is not generally the basic CRM elements that do the billing or the main customer database, but the hideous complexity of the energy system structures and the component sub-systems within the overall CRM. Because Ofgem approve all the network codes, performance standards, and issue hugely detailed supplier licences, they (Ofgem) exist largely as a parasitic life form attached to the quasi-market they have created. They create the complexity that contributes to poor service, they are then judge, jury and executioner when things go wrong, thus justifying their own existence. They boast about issuing about quarter of a billion quid in fines to the industry, yet cannot see that for customers this is evidence of Ofgem's failure, not their success.

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          1. Anonymous Coward
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            Anonymous Coward

            Re: IPA 2016 (not the Ale!)

            Ledswinger is wrong. There was a deal between CoopEnergy and Which in 2012, 'the big switch'

            http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/utilities/2012/05/co-operative-energy-wins-whichs-big-switch

            The recent £1.8m CoopEnergy payout to 260,000 customers for poor service, billing wasn't a fine though. Ofgem didn't leverage a fine on CoopEnergy, it was reported in the press as such, but it wasn't a fine.

            Gave the impression Ofgem had done something, but actually they hadn't. Ofgem knew about CoopEnergy billing problems in March 2015, 18 months of hell for CoopEnergy Customers, still ongoing.

            The payout amounted to an average £7 per customer, it didn't even cover the losses of these customers in many cases, many were never contacted even though they made complaints to ofgem and through Energy ombudsman. There was no cross checking, dotting the i's crossing the t's. There wasn't even basic checks like this to make customers that had complained received payment.

            0 1 Reply
            1. Anonymous Coward
              Reply Icon
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: IPA 2016 (not the Ale!)

              Ledswinger is wrong.

              Ledswinger is neither wrong, nor modest.

              There was a deal between CoopEnergy and Which in 2012, 'the big switch'

              Collective switching is normal business in the energy market. Your statement is correct, but it wasn't the driver for Coop's problems, which started much later. But rather than take my word for it (after all I only work in the industry), why not read what Ofgem concluded and publicly reported? I'll abstract verbatim for you: "Co-operative Energy put in place a new billing system in March 2015. Following the installation, multiple issues adversely affected Co-operative Energy’s customers which were brought to our attention in June 2015."

              Next, please!

              0 1 Reply
              1. Anonymous Coward
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                Anonymous Coward

                Re: IPA 2016 (not the Ale!)

                Does anyone believe anything Ofgem puts in rose tinted reports? As said they are narcissistic organisation that looks after number 1 above all else. Customers are somewhere at the bottom.

                The complaint mechanims in place are tedious and achieve nothing, much like the system dealing with rail delays. It's one big merry-go-round, in which the Customer spends hours, provides all the intelligence/work and gets £7 avg for the privilege. Ofgem are not a pre-emptive organisation.

                You're doing what Ofgem does best. Missing the fact for the reason CoopEnergy needed a new billing system, which was the 'the big switch'. You also fail to acknowledge that Ofgem doesn't regulate the rollout of new billing systems and that "brought to our attention", i.e formally via an official complaint (against Ofgem), which remember, takes a minimum of 20 days+10 days from first contact,

                It is very different to "knowing about and doing nothing", which is what they effectively did. Ofgem knew very early on, they delayed and delayed, blocking complaints, and blocking complaints against Ofgem themselves.

                The whole thing stinks. Even the fact that you have to defend the regulator, that should never have to happen.

                0 0 Reply
                1. Anonymous Coward
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                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: IPA 2016 (not the Ale!)

                  Back in 2012, Collective Switching wasn't the norm.

                  It also takes a minimum of 8 weeks for the Energy Supplier (in this case CoopEnergy) to respond and attempt to take corrective action, before you can raise an escalated complaint via the Energy Ombudsman or attempt to raise a side complaint through Ofgem (which is very hard to do).

                  Even though in this case, it was very obvious on day one that the problems would not be correctable in these first 8 weeks, as there were so many, i.e. regards their systems "The whole caboodle was fcuked".

                  Ofgem stating June 2015, actually means, complaints to CoopEnergy were much earlier. Ofgem 'knew' , whichever way you want to dress this up, with no action until November 2016, which was by then, too little, too late. CoopEnergy paying out a pittance of £7 average payment per customer. (none of which has been validated).

                  Ofgem effectively did nothing, no fine, nothing, all they seem to do is shady hidden backrooms deals to keep things below radar, because the Energy Market is such a fcuk up.

                  0 0 Reply
                  1. Anonymous Coward
                    Reply Icon
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: IPA 2016 @ Adam Jarvis

                    the Energy Market is such a fcuk up.

                    Yes. Because both Ofgem and DECC/BEIS have so persistently intervened, creating new rules, new structures, because ultimately, government (and civil service) do not like market outcomes.

                    CoopEnergy paying out a pittance of £7 average payment per customer.

                    That was my earlier point about Ofgem's bias towards small suppliers. They'll happily fine incumbent companies tens of millions, but the smaller companies they let get away with murder. I work for an incumbent, and it costs us a fortune to be compliant with the rules imposed by the bunglers at Ofgem - not only fairly regular fines, but also infrastructure that we have to have, and new entrants don't eg sales call recording, plus real time human monitoring for around one in ten sales calls - ie one person makes an outbound sales call, that call is recorded, and still a person has to listen in one one in ten calls - plus the consequences of "re-education" if there's a process failure. Customers pay for that.

                    Or rather, THEY CHOOSE NOT TO. People use services like Uswitch, choose the cheapest fly-shit supplier, and then moan in horrified surprise that the services is shite. And cost savings are not only the slapdash approach to customer service and compliance that smaller companies have, they are legally permitted to dodge an assortment of schemes (mainly ECO, WHD, FIT) that add about £90 a year to the bills of larger companies. And that's without the shenanigans of hedging, where most small companies save money but take higher risks.

                    Personally, I've just taken the best three year electricity fix I could find with a company that might be around to honour it. For gas I went with the cheapest unheard of, because at this point gas is trending down and my exit penalty is modest. I'd recommend that approach to the house. Going for the cheapest dual fuel standard tariff or one year fix may look even better, but I think that's false economy because I expect electricity prices to keep rising over the next three years, due solely to our halfwit government's energy policy.

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                2. Anonymous Coward
                  Reply Icon
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: IPA 2016 (not the Ale!)

                  You're doing what Ofgem does best. Missing the fact for the reason CoopEnergy needed a new billing system, which was the 'the big switch'.

                  From memory, Coop started off with a vanilla "supplier in a box" regulatory and IT solution from Utiligroup. I work for an established energy company using a homebrew CRM, but I've got an immense amount of respect for Utiligroup and their IT solution. It doesn't do anything particlarly fancy, but it does most of the basics well, and it can scale easily. And the point, Sunny Jim, is that Coop didn't need to change their CRM for reasons of scale; Utiligroup's product will support several million customers with ease. Some much larger companies are still using Utiligroup software quite happily.

                  The reason Coop upgraded their CRM was a desire to add more functionality. So the big switch had diddly effing squat to do with the matter.

                  You also fail to acknowledge that Ofgem doesn't regulate the rollout of new billing systems...

                  FFS, why would they? Are you telling me that Ofgem are (or should be) experts in application architecture, process design, systems integration, and deployment? Idiot.

                  the fact that you have to defend the regulator,...

                  Maybe you should search my posting history before typing shit like that? Do come back when you know what you're talking about.

                  1 1 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: IPA 2016 (not the Ale!)

      "if they can't find the 6095 people who phoned 1 - one!! - specific number"

      To be fair, they will have identified the accounts, they just don't have up-to-date contact details for those customers, presumably as they've since left EE - the incident was 2-3 years ago.

      0 0 Reply
  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How long until the "Have you ever called 150 ...if so you may be in line for a refund" texts start arrving on EE numbers!

    3 0 Reply
  3. randomwomble

    What about overcharging for 4G data

    Did they do anything about EE overcharging for 4G data? When I switched from 3G to 4G I noticed my data usage seemed to increase exponentially - when I compared EE's figures to the figures logged by my phone - the EE data usage figures were vastly exaggerated. It took a few months but EE did seem to correct it eventually, but I wondered if they ever refunded anyone who paid unnecessarily for data bundles.

    1 0 Reply
    1. Your alien overlord - fear me
      Reply Icon

      Re: What about overcharging for 4G data

      to be fair - increased data usage on 4G is because you were watching more womble porn on your mobile :-)

      0 1 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What about overcharging for 4G data

        womble porn

        What, Orinoco getting it on with Madame Cholet?

        0 0 Reply
  4. teebie

    That's encouraging

    The fine was bigger than the amount of profit EE made from overcharging. That seems to go against normal practice among government regulators.

    1 0 Reply
    1. Korev Silver badge
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      Thumb Up

      Re: That's encouraging

      I was going to post the same point

      0 0 Reply
  5. Darth Poundshop
    Devil

    A truly lousy company

    ...that has nothing but disdain for its customers. They helped themselves to money from my bank account and when challenged said that I 'must have clicked on something'. Yet when I asked for evidence, they couldn't provide any at all - just passed me off to their colleagues at Buongiorno who argued that I must have clicked on 'something' but couldn't (or wouldn't) provide any evidence of exactly what. The idea seems to be they take your money and pay it back if you notice. I got my money back, but if you search for the Buongiorno/B!Games/EE Scam you'll see they've had this racket going on for years. For some reason, Ofcom don't seem to think it's anything to do with them

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