Energy firm pays out £1.76m after failing 61,000 customers

Energy supplier Bulb has been fined by Ofgem.

The firm is to pay £1.76 million in package of redress, refunds and goodwill payments after Ofgem found it had fallen foul of rules in switching, overcharging, and Priority Services Register issues.

Around 3,800 consumers were blocked from switching to Bulb and missed out on savings because they were on Restricted Meter Infrastructure (RMI), where there is more than one meter at a property, while a further 11,400 RMI customers were wrongly charged multiple standing charges, being overcharged by £699,000 in total.

Bulb has since paid back affected customers and provided additional goodwill payments to customers who were overcharged, totalling £675,000.

Meanwhile, a 46,500 vulnerable Bulb customers were removed from their network operators’ Priority Service Register, between March 2019 and January 2020, after Bulb’s systems mistakenly signalled to operators that they should remove them due to a data error. This meant that some customers missed out on essential priority services, such as being given advance notice of a planned power outage. Bulb self-reported this issue to Ofgem in February this year, and has now compensated the 933 customers who were removed from the register and suffered a power outage, totalling £70,000.

Consumer groups welcomed the crackdown.

Richard Neudegg, head of regulation at Uswitch.com, said: “It is positive to see that Bulb has rectified the situation and since improved its processes, paying a £1.76 million package of redress, refunds and goodwill payments.

“However, consumers do expect all suppliers to get the basics right - and the system failures leading to overcharging of 11,400 customers an average of £61 will cause concern for some households. A smaller number of Bulb’s customers were also blocked from switching - and have missed out on crucial savings.

Ofgem said the supplier had confirmed that it has improved its governance and processes and compensated and refunded all customers who suffered detriment as a result. It paid a further £157,000 into the voluntary redress fund to support customers in a vulnerable situation.

Jonathan Brearley, chief executive of Ofgem, said: “Bulb overcharged some customers, and risked leaving vulnerable customers without access to essential network services, when it failed to comply with Ofgem’s rules.”

Bulb said: “We pride ourselves on the quality of our systems and technology, but in these instances we needed to improve.”

“To do so, we’ve strengthened the relevant teams, introduced new processes and training and introduced more checking and verification.”

It added: “We’re sorry. We will do better.”

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