British Gas Homecare wins the 2021 Wooden Spoon Award!

The wait is finally over. We today reveal the winner of Money Mail’s 2021 Wooden Spoon Award for rotten customer service is… British Gas HomeCare.

We relaunched our awards in December after service levels plummeted to new lows during the pandemic.

And the unprecedented number of entries we received gives a good indication of just how fed up you are.

You selected the unfortunate victor — which received a fifth of all votes — from a shortlist of ten firms that dominated our postbag last year.

Here we reveal the full results, and what the boss of Centrica, which owns British Gas, had to say about scooping the dreaded prize…

Shocking delays

We presented the pitiful trophy to a disappointed and apologetic Chris O’Shea, chief executive of Centrica, last Wednesday.

Dressed casually in a royal blue hoodie, he looks relaxed as he speaks to me via video call from his home near Reading. But when I hold up the cringe-worthy award, he grimaces. ‘Hmmm, thank you,’ he mutters.

Around 3.4 million policyholders pay for insurance with British Gas to cover the cost of boiler repairs and annual services. For a little extra each month, they can also protect their home electrics, drains and plumbing.

The adverts promise ‘peace of mind’, yet scores of readers say they were abandoned last year and left without heating or hot water for weeks.

Disappointed: Chris O’Shea – the boss of Britsh Gas Homecare’s parent company Centrica

Bill Palmer, 70, was told he would have to wait eight weeks to get his boiler fixed despite paying £368 last year for cover. The grandfather, from Redhill, Surrey, ended up paying a local tradesman £85 to do the job sooner.

Mr O’Shea — who takes home £775,000 a year before benefits, bonuses and shares — is in complete agreement that this is unacceptable. ‘You cannot wait that long with no heating and hot water. This has fallen through gaps in the system,’ he says.

He adds that he’d like problems to be resolved in three days, but the firm is not there yet.

Engineers failing to turn up as promised was another common complaint. Valerie Broom, 82, from Bristol, has now cancelled her £423-a-year policy after her boiler services were repeatedly cancelled at short notice.

For Mr O’Shea, nothing frustrates him more than this.

Like most firms, British Gas has been hit by more staff absences due to Covid, which meant engineers could not attend all customer appointments, while strikes have caused further delays.

‘But what you have to do is tell them,’ the Centrica boss says in an exasperated tone. He adds that a new system to help engineers see more customers in a day should be in place by next winter.

Long call wait times are another major bugbear among readers.

Heather Stapleton, 80, from Devon, says she couldn’t get through on the phone to report a boiler fault last year and was directed to a chat service instead.

Heather, whose husband suffers from Alzheimer’s, says: ‘Life can be pretty stressful and to be unable to pick up a phone and speak quickly to someone to get a problem solved is maddening beyond belief.’ 

The average wait time has come down to around four minutes, with the maximum nearly 11 minutes — but the firm hopes to improve these further. Just under 98 per cent of emergency visits are now completed within 24 hours.

Peace of mind: Around 3.4 million policyholders pay for insurance with British Gas to cover the cost of boiler repairs and annual services

Unfair prices

Mr O’Shea openly admits that customer service has declined in recent years — something he is ‘really unhappy about’. He’s aware customer numbers have fallen too.

Many experts believe getting staff back to the office would go a long way to improving service levels. At home, internet connections can be patchy and managers are not on hand to help with serious complaints.

Yet Mr O’Shea, appointed chief executive in 2020, has no intention of making his workers return to the office five days a week — and as a ‘do as I do, not as I say’ man, neither will he. 

‘Before lockdown, you opened your call centres and needed all the infrastructure to be there. Now you plug into your laptop at home and it all works as long as you have broadband,’ he says. 

‘We’re learning a lot. When it works it’s brilliant, but when it doesn’t it’s a nightmare,’ he adds.

Readers also complain about unfair prices, with loyal customers often charged hundreds of pounds more than new policyholders.

The firm is now making changes to its pricing and introduced a no-claims discount for some customers last year. Those with newer boilers could also be rewarded with lower prices as they are less likely to break down.

Official figures show complaints about British Gas Service Ltd hit 191,414 in the first half of last year — more than double the 69,665 recorded in the first half of 2020. 

Around 99 per cent were upheld in favour of the customer, according to the Financial Conduct Authority. Complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service also rose.

Mr O’Shea, says he gets a weekly report on complaints, and personally responds to every person who emails him direct. 

He receives around 15 to 20 a day in winter. He waves a headset at me, and tells me he spent an hour that morning taking customer calls — something he does at least once a month.

‘The great thing about taking customer calls is that you see just what a difference you make when you get it right — and the stress you cause when you get it wrong.’

When I ask him what he would like to say to readers who feel so let down, his face falls. ‘We’ve identified where the issues are. I can’t fix them overnight but we will fix them,’ he says. ‘Our customers are the most important thing. I’m sorry and trust us that we’ll improve.’

If you’re still in any doubt, try calling — he could be the one who answers.

v.bischoff@dailymail.co.uk