JOANNA WALLACE

INDEPENDENT ASSESSORThe Independent Assessor

PO Box 1024The Brew House

WarringtonWA4 9FG

Mrs

16h December 2015

Dear Mrs ,

I have now completed my investigation into your complaint against Ombudsman Services (OS), which I have laid out below.

1.0 Summary of Complaint

I agreed to consider the following two elements of complaint for you:

a) Delay - specifically that other cases were considered ahead of yours (868779) creating a delay of around a year; and

b) That Gill Tyrer’s explanations of the delay (as being due to volume of complaints) were untrue.

2.0 My review of your case

I have reviewed the record of your case 868779 on the OS Peppermint system.

Your case was accepted for investigation on 3rd January 2013 following exchange of documents between you and OS to confirm the scope of your complaint. Documents were requested of Eon on the 4th January and were received by OS on 19th January. Your case was assigned to Investigation Officer Gill Tyrer on 25th January 2013. On 4th February she emailed you with her investigation findings addressing the elements of your complaint (as you are aware my terms of reference do not cover my consideration of those or the remedies suggested). I note that she said in that email that “had E.ON not already proposed a £30 payment as a gesture of goodwill, we would not be recommending that it make this payment to you and our proposed remedy would be for no further action.”

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She emailed you for a response on 6th and 8th February. You replied on 11th February and queried the meter reading databases that OS has access to. Gill replied the same day and confirmed which they were, but said this did not influence her findings.

Her report was sent to you and to Eon on 13th February 2013 and she chased both you and Eon on 6th March 2013 for responses. Eon replied and accepted the report on 7th March, you replied on 16th March with representations against the proposed remedy – you asked for Ombudsman review of your case. This was acknowledged on 18th March and you were told your case would go for Ombudsman review.

There was no action on your case that I can see in April or May 2013 although it was flagged as requiring action on a number of occasions and on 20th May there is a note from a team manager asking that the case be progressed (most likely as there had been no action on it for some time).

You emailed on 6th June 2013 to ask when you might hear from the Ombudsman on your case. Gill Tyrer responded on 25th June to say this was delayed “due to the number of complaints we are currently handling.”

There was no further action on your case until 12th and 24th July when there were case-checking calls and emails with Eon and with the Ombudsman by Gill Tyrer. On 1st August 2013 the draft final report is logged for Ombudsman review and sign off.

There is then no further activity on the case until December 2013 when it appears Chris Gill the Independent Assessor in place at that time became involved, presumably at your instigation. On 16th December Gill Tyrer emailed a letter saying she hoped you would receive a final decision within the next four weeks and again that the delay was due to the volume of cases. A similar email was sent to Eon on the same day with the same explanation.

You emailed on 3rd January 2014 and asked if the delay in getting a final decision was due to the nature of your case, that it was waiting for a specific ombudsman or whether it was queued in an “orderly fashion” with all other cases. Gill responded on 9th January and again said that it was due to the volume of cases; she emailed her team leader a few days later to say that you were chasing the final decision on your case. Your case was still awaiting Ombudsman review at this time.

On 10th February Eon got in touch with OS to ask if the final decision was ready.

On 14th February the final decision from the Ombudsman was sent to you and to Eon. On 7th March 2014 Gill Tyrer sent you a letter chasing a decision on whether you accepted the report or not. The report was re-

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sent at your request on 21st March 2014. On 7th April a form for accepting the Ombudsman Decision was sent to you at your request with a reminder that it was due in 7 days. You responded seeking a response to another email you had sent on another topic/case. You accepted the remedy on 15th April and the following day Eon emailed to say that the £30 cheque had been raised.

A letter was emailed on 20th May 2014 addressing the questions you had raised about missing responses to messages you had sent.

Your case then remained closed for just over 8 months, when on 4th February 2014 you raised a service complaint about the delay in your case and specifically the explanation given for that. This was acknowledged by Gill Gibson from Customer Relations the same day and a response promised within 10 days.

On 16th February 2014 Alison Fearns responded and said that she could see no evidence that Gill Tyrer’s explanations were untrue – she also acknowledged that correspondence had not always been complete when sent to you and she offered an apology and consolatory payment of £35 in recognition of this.

On 8th April 2015 you emailed and rejected that offer and asked your complaint be escalated to Simon Morris, deputy Chief Executive and he replied to you on 24th April 2015. He agreed that there had been a 12 month delay in your case and apologised that this was excessive. He confirmed that this was due to the volume of complaints they had received, and that different Ombudsmen have different case loads which might speak to why another case was considered within 2 months, around the same time in 2013, much more quickly than this one. He re-offered the £35 that Alison had offered to you earlier.

You brought your complaint to me on 23rd July, one day before the 3 month deadline to bring a complaint to the Independent Assessors. We exchanged emails about the scope of your complaint and my terms of reference until 23rd November when we finalised your case for my consideration.

3.0 Findings

a) Delay - specifically that other cases were considered ahead of yours (868779) creating a delay of around a year;

It is clear there was significant delay in your case and both Alison Fearns from Customer Relations and Simon Morris acknowledged this in their service complaint responses to you. The consolatory payment offer of £35 acknowledged this (and some incomplete correspondence sent to you). Whilst the delay was long I consider this amount appropriate in the circumstances of the case, as there was no financial loss to you because

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of it. Your Eon complaint remedy was the same at the end of the process as it had been at the beginning; Eon had offered you this amount and OS said they would not have done so had it been left to them to find remedy. As such I find this element of complaint to be justified.

b) That Gill Tyrer’s explanations of the delay (as being due to volume of complaints) were untrue.

There were two periods of inactivity in your case, the first in April, May and June of 2013. There were flags and prompts on the case for it to be worked at regular intervals during that period and you yourself made an enquiry during that time with regard to progress. I can therefore conclude that your case had not simply been overlooked, as such interventions typically prompt action on a case. Rather it appears that the IO just did not have time to give to it, which would only have been due to the volume of other work she had.

There was a second and much longer period of delay, waiting for the Ombudsman to review your case between August 2013 and February 2014. The case was flagged as awaiting Ombudsman review and sign off on August 1st 2013 and was finally signed off by him in February 2014, almost seven months later. There were chasing emails from you (twice, once via the IA) and Eon during that time, and apologies for delay sent to both parties. I am persuaded that the case was not simply overlooked as there was chasing action on it, which as I noted above typically prompts action if that is the case.

I can see no evidence that Gill Tyrer’s explanations of the cause of the delay were untrue and as such I do not uphold your complaint

4.0 Recommendations

You were offered £35 by Simon Morris in recognition of the shortcomings in handling your case which I consider fair and appropriate. I recommend that offer remains open to you.

5.0 Next Steps

Please confirm with Ombudsman Services whether you accept my consolatory payment recommendation.

By email to Customer-relations@ombudsman-services.orgBy postCustomer Relations ManagerOmbudsman ServicesThe Brew HouseWilderspool ParkGreenall’s AvenueWarrington, WA14 6HL

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I have asked Ombudsman Services to complete my recommendation within 28 working days, if you choose to accept.

This letter concludes my review of your service complaint and brings my involvement with your case to an end – my terms of reference do not provide for any appeal of my decisions, which are final. I do not enter into correspondence following a decision, therefore it only remains for me to thank you for asking me to consider your complaint.

Yours sincerely

Joanna WallaceIndependent Assessor

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