The chief executive and chief ombudsman designate at Ombudsman Services said a failure to adequately deal with complaints led to the demise of Iresa.
The energy supplier ceased trading last Friday (27 July) and its 90,000 customers will be absorbed by supplier of last resort Octopus Energy.
This year alone the Energy Ombudsman accepted a total of 2,282 complaints about Iresa for investigation.
The majority of the complaints were about the company’s failure to issue refunds or credit to customer accounts. This accounted for 12.02 per cent of all complaints.
The second highest complaint concerned customers not receiving their final bill. This accounted for almost 11 per cent of complaints.
Complaints peaked in April and May but began to drop off, suggesting the company had started to address the issues.
Matthew Vickers, CEO of Ombudsman Services, said a “clear lesson” here is to invest time and money in addressing a problem as soon as you are aware of it.
He said: “More than 20 per cent of unresolved Iresa complaints handled this year by Ombudsman Services in its role as the Energy Ombudsman were about failure to issue refunds/credits or final bills not being received.”
This, he added, suggests that disgruntled consumers were already starting to leave Iresa, having had their “hands burnt” by poor customer service, billing problems or other issues.
Vickers argues that had Iresa put in place an adequately trained and resourced customer relations team and a fit-for-purpose billing system from the outset, it would have had more success in maintaining good service levels and ultimately retaining customers.
An examination of the cases handled by the Ombudsman revealed many were resolved by the company simply fixing the issue, with no goodwill payment awards needing to be made to the consumer.
Vickers added: “Having in place a larger, more efficient complaints-handling process would have enabled a large proportion of cases to be nipped in the bud early on.”
A spokesman for Ombudsman Services, said: “From a peak in April and May, when we were handling around 450 Iresa cases per month, complaint volumes had actually started to decrease – suggesting that Iresa was starting to address some of its customer service issues.”
Earlier this year, Ofgem ordered Iresa to improve customer service and banned the supplier from taking on new customers.