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Case ref:201301770
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Date:April 2014
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Body:Business Stream
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Sector:Water
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Outcome:Upheld, recommendations
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Subject:meter reading
Summary
Mr C had complained about aspects of his billing, which Business Stream then resolved after we became involved. However, we had concerns about their handling of his complaint. Mr C explained his perspective of this in detail, and Business Stream acknowledged that their service to him was not what they would have expected. They apologised and offered him a payment. However, this outcome took almost three months to provide, needed the intervention of senior staff in SPSO to obtain, was very brief and did not indicate any intention to take action to help avoid a recurrence.
Although we upheld the complaint, after careful thought we decided not to make a recommendation about complaints handling. This was because we published an investigation report in December 2013 (case 201300283), in which we upheld a complaint about Business Stream's complaints handling and made a recommendation that they arrange an independent external audit of their complaints process and how it was being applied. Business Stream accepted this, and were also at the time completing an internal review of their process. We were, therefore, satisfied that they were addressing the issue.
Recommendations
We recommended that Business Stream:
- apologise to Mr C for their poor handling of his case.