Thousands of energy customers contacted regulator months into cost-of-living crisis

The Commission for Regulation of Utilities said electricity suppliers’ customer service continued to be a high driver of such customer contacts across the first six months of this year.

Queries to Ireland’s energy regulator exploded across the early months of 2023 as the cost-of-living crisis continued to press on the resources of Irish households.

The Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) said that it had received 3,788 contacts from energy customers over the first three months of the year, a massive 35% increase on the same period in 2022.

It said that electricity account issues and billing problems had driven the larger volume of those contacts, per its quarterly insight report into the nature of the complaints it receives from the public.

Meanwhile, electricity suppliers’ customer service continued to be a high driver of such customer contacts across the first six months of this year.

The commission said it had received 2,190 phone calls in the first three months of the year, together with 7,146 emails, 672 online queries and 117 letters, from which the 3,788 cases on its customer care system had been created.

The CRU said that while contacts from utility customers were at the highest level the commission had ever reported over that three-month period, the unprecedented volumes seen had begun “to ease” from April onwards, with contact levels for the second quarter of the year actually 14% lower than that seen 12 months previously.

It said that the key drivers behind the spike in customer queries over the first quarter of 2023 included the emergency electricity credit applied to all bills in the wake of the ongoing surge in utility costs, which accounted for 12% of all the queries received, together with billing and account problems and customer service issues.

The commission added that many of the customer service problems experienced by the public towards the end of last year had resulted from suppliers themselves experiencing higher contact volumes than normal, together with “staffing issues”.

Such low responsiveness levels appear to have declined as an issue into 2023 however, with contacts from the public citing such issues reducing to just 2% of overall contacts over the first six months of this year, compared to more than 10% of contacts at the end of 2022.

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Problems experienced by customers at that time included long call-wait times and reduced responsiveness in general on the part of suppliers across other communications channels, including web chat portals and email.

The commission said those problems were particularly notable among the larger energy suppliers, with Electric Ireland in particular accounting for 59% of such contacts across the final three months of 2022.

The share of customer contacts for Ireland’s seven largest energy suppliers, meanwhile, remained broadly in line with the size of their market share, with the exception of Electric Ireland which boasted 57% of the contacts made between April and June of this year, despite the supplier having only 45% of the market.

The CRU provides a dispute resolution service for customers with an unresolved complaint against one of Ireland’s energy suppliers, while also providing independent advice to people regarding utility services and supplier obligations.

A spokesperson for the CRU said that the organisation “is aware of the impact high energy prices is having on households and small businesses, especially those that may already be struggling to pay their bills”.

“There are several enhanced protections in place for all energy customers and for those who qualify as vulnerable customers,” they said.