Complaints to Water Plus soar as gripes against Wave, Business Stream and Castle tumble

CCW condemned the widening gap between the best and worst performing retailers in the non-household market when it reported business customer complaints for the 2021/22 year last week.

Worst performer Water Plus attracted 25% more written complaints per 10,000 supply points than in 2020/21 (see table at foot of this story). CCW said: “This is significantly the worst complaint rate in the industry, almost 50% higher than the next worst performing retailer in this measure.” Complaints from Water Plus customers to CCW fell 16%, but remained in the lowest performing quartile.

Chief executive of Water Plus, Andy Hughes, said: “We’re very disappointed with the number of complaints and we’ll not stop our efforts with customers – and our additional actions – to reduce any areas where these can occur. A unique factor for us, in the last year, saw the introduction of two new wholesaler initiatives by Severn Trent and United Utilities to update information on site use in England and, under industry requirements, bringing customers into charge where they’re using water, with this work also contributing to complaints.

“Amongst other market measures, work by our team means we’re amongst the top three water retailers in market performance scores at the start of this new financial year – and customer satisfaction scores have seen an upward trend since October in independent survey results, with 70% of customers rating us as five stars, out of five, for general satisfaction.”

The other poorest performers on written complaints per 10,000 supply points were Clear Business Water (up 31%) and SES Business Water (up 40%).

In stark contrast to these three, three of the market’s other other biggest suppliers registered major reductions in written complaint numbers: Castle Water down 21%; Business Stream down 27%; and Wave down 38%.

Excluding the Welsh integrated companies, the best performers were First Business Water, Everflow and Water2business.

Overall, business complaints to retailers in 2021/22 were down 2% to 14,751 but remained stubbornly above pre market opening levels (11,772 in 2016/17).

Business complaints to CCW continued the falling pattern established since 2018/19. Last year, these complaints tumbled by 19% to 2,295.

Billing and charges remain the biggest source of problem for complaining customers.