Expert Reviews Energy Awards 2024: The results

The cost-of-living crisis has meant that everything has become more expensive but, thankfully, energy prices came down a bit this year. They’re still historically high though, and many households are struggling to afford them.

There was yet another increase on 1 January, the energy price cap set by the energy regulator, Ofgem, for suppliers’ standard tariffs went up by 5% – taking a typical dual-fuel household paying by direct debit from paying £1,834 per year to £1,928. This is purportedly due to world events – in particular, the conflict in the Middle East – pushing up wholesale gas prices.

However, the good news is that many energy suppliers are offering fixed and discounted deals again, which means you may be able to save money by switching suppliers, or at least get some certainty about what your bills will be like for a while. Some of these deals are only for existing customers, but this might mean you could benefit by changing tariffs with your current supplier.

Whether you’re thinking about switching suppliers or not, it’s helpful to know how energy suppliers compare and whether you’re getting a good service. The Expert Reviews Energy Awards uncover which energy companies have the happiest customers and which are the best for customer service, value for money, clarity and accuracy of bills and answering calls or messages when you contact them.

By teaming up with YouGov, we’ve looked at how satisfied you are with your suppliers and whether you would recommend them, so you can find out how well your current supplier is doing and which are the best ones to switch to.

See below for this year’s winners and which suppliers have been left in the dust.

READ NEXT: Best energy suppliers

Expert Reviews Energy Awards 2024

Overall Winner: Octopus Energy

Highly commended: Scottish Power, E.ON Next

Once again, Octopus Energy has won the award for the overall best supplier this year – the third time in a row it’s achieved this. It also swept the board, winning all four categories for the second year running.

A massive 79% of Octopus’s customers said they would recommend it, leaving all the other suppliers way behind. For perspective, the second most recommended supplier, Scottish Power, had just 43% of customers saying they would recommend it, closely followed by E.ON Next with 42%. Despite their scores not being much to celebrate, these are our two Highly Commended firms.

Octopus, which only supplies electricity from renewable sources, was founded in 2015 but is now one of Great Britain’s largest energy suppliers. It’s taken on many failed suppliers over the years, including its acquisition of Bulb Energy and its 1.5 million customers in 2022. It’s now bought out Shell Energy in the UK and Germany, claiming its 1.4 million home energy customers and 500,000 broadband customers. This takes Octopus’s total household customers to 6.6 million, making it the second-largest domestic supplier in the UK.

According to Ofgem’s latest customer complaints data for the third quarter of 2023, it had the lowest number of complaints of all the suppliers in our survey at 1,133 per 100,000 customer accounts – well below the average of 1,578. For comparison, the supplier in our survey with the highest number of complaints was EDF Energy with 2,562 per 100,000.

Octopus also performed well on resolving complaints, with 69% resolved by the next working day and 90% within eight weeks.

The suppliers with the smallest proportion of customers who said they would recommend them were Shell Energy with a poor 30% – though they can look forward to service improvements now that they’re becoming Octopus customers – and EDF Energy, where just 36% of customers said they would recommend it.

Readers who would recommend

Best Customer Service: Octopus Energy

Highly commended: Scottish Power, E.ON Next

Octopus Energy has beaten the competition by a long way on customer service too, comfortably winning our Best Customer Service award. Along with value for money, this is likely to be the most important factor in how happy you are with your energy provider.

At 72%, almost three-quarters of Octopus’s customers said they were satisfied, including the 42% who were very satisfied. Just 6% said they were dissatisfied.

Of course, being able to get in touch with your supplier when you need to is an important component of great customer service and, as we’ll get into later, Octopus was the quickest to answer the phone to customers who contacted it, answering 12% of calls in less than one minute and a total of 42% in less than five minutes.

By contrast, the second-best supplier for customer service, Scottish Power, had just 46% of their customers satisfied overall, including a dismal 13% claiming to be very satisfied. The third-best company, E.ON Next, had barely even two-fifths (40%) of its customers expressing satisfaction with their service, including 11% very satisfied.

The suppliers with the most dissatisfied customers were Shell Energy, with 25% saying they were dissatisfied – a whopping 19 percentage points higher than Octopus (6%) – and EDF Energy at 23%. A poor 6% of EDF customers said they were very satisfied. It also had the highest number of complaints according to Ofgem’s data.

Customer service

Best Value: Octopus Energy

Highly commended: Ovo Energy, Scottish Power

While energy prices are relatively expensive across the board right now, this bitter pill is easier to swallow if you feel like you’re getting good value for the money you’re spending.

Once again, Octopus was way ahead of its rivals for this – 64% of customers were satisfied overall, including 27% very satisfied – bagging it our Best Value award. The percentage of satisfied customers for our Highly Commended providers was half of Octopus’s figure at 32%, so their results are quite disappointing by comparison.

The drop in energy prices in recent months has had a clear impact on the value for money customers feel they’re getting: the overall percentage who said they were satisfied has risen compared to last year’s survey. In the case of Octopus, last year just 53% of its customers said they were satisfied – 11 points below this year’s score.

Despite this increase, a higher percentage of people told us they had contacted their providers in the previous 12 months to say they were struggling with their bills – 10% of gas customers and 12% of electricity customers, versus 7% for both last year. However, this isn’t really surprising as energy prices were at their highest from October 2022 until the end of June 2023, when the energy price guarantee of £2,500 for a typical bill applied.

Shell Energy, again, had the most dissatisfied customers when it came to value for money at 49%.

Value for money

Best Bills: Octopus Energy

Highly commended: E.ON Next, Ovo Energy

Being able to understand your bills, and their being accurate, is essential for checking what you’re paying, as well as comparing costs if or when you’re looking to switch.

Octopus Energy also topped the tables in this category, winning our Best Bills award. The vast majority of its customers (84%) said their bills were easy to understand, including 47% who said they were very easy. It also had the most accurate bills – more than half (52%) of customers said their bills were always accurate.

Our Highly Commended suppliers, E.ON Next and Ovo Energy, also performed well here, with 77% and 73%, respectively, saying their bills were easy to understand. E.ON Next also had a higher proportion of customers than Ovo saying their bills were very easy to understand, at 33% versus Ovo’s 28%.

They weren’t in the top three for accuracy though: only 41% of E.ON Next customers said their bills were always accurate, and 36% – the lowest percentage in this category – of Ovo customers agreed.

Shell Energy was only slightly behind Ovo (73%) for customers who found their bills easy to understand, with 69%, and had a lower percentage who said they were difficult to understand (20%) versus Ovo (24%) – Shell’s not one of our highly commended suppliers, however. Shell Energy did have the third-highest percentage for accuracy, at 43%, but was beaten to second place by Scottish Power, with 44%.

EDF Energy was the worst performer for the clarity of its bills, with 27% of customers saying they were difficult to understand.

Ease of understanding bills

Accuracy of bills

Fastest Call Centre Response: Octopus Energy

Highly commended: E.ON Next, British Gas

Being kept waiting on the phone is infuriating, especially when you have an urgent query, so getting your call answered quickly goes a long way towards making sure you’re a happy customer. In our survey, 36% of customers said they had phoned their suppliers in the past 12 months.

This makes it a clean sweep for Octopus Energy as it won our Fastest Call Centre Response award too, out of the five suppliers with a big enough sample size (at least 50 people) for us to be able to rate them for calls. It managed to answer around two-fifths (42%) of its calls in five minutes or less, with an impressive 12% answered in less than one minute.

Octopus was also the fastest to respond when its customers contacted it online or by email out of the five suppliers we were able to rate, with 44% saying they received a reply in one day or less. Fewer people contacted their suppliers online or by email than by phone at 33%.

Highly commended providers E.ON Next and British Gas were a way behind. E.ON Next answered 26% of calls in five minutes or less and British Gas answered 25%. They also performed well below Octopus for the percentage of calls they answered in less than one minute, with 4% and 5% respectively.

British Gas and E.ON Next also came second and third for how quickly they answered messages submitted online or by email. British Gas replied to 38% in one day or less, with an impressive 28% answered in four hours or less, and E.ON Next replied to 33% in one day or less.

Around a quarter of EDF Energy and Ovo Energy customers were kept waiting for more than 20 minutes to have their calls answered (22% and 24%). For online and email contact, 19% of EDF customers had to wait more than four days for a response and 15% of Ovo customers didn’t get a response at all.

Call waiting times

Online/email contact response times

Methodology

All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov plc. The total sample size was 2,006 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 13 – 16 October 2023. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all adults (aged 18+) in Great Britain.

We asked respondents how likely they would be to recommend their energy suppliers to a friend and to rate their overall customer service, value for money, how easy their bills were to understand and how accurate their bills were. We also asked them how long it took their suppliers to respond if they had contacted them by phone, online or via email.

Only suppliers where the respondents totalled more than 50 people were included in our results. This means we haven’t been able to report on Boost Energy, Co-op Energy, E, Ebico, Ecotricity, Outfox the Market, Sainsbury’s Energy, SO Energy, Utilita or Utility Warehouse.

The total percentages mentioned in the article may differ slightly compared to the figures in the tables due to rounding.

We also looked at complaints data published by the energy regulator, Ofgem. To be the overall winner, a supplier must have received fewer complaints than the average across all suppliers according to the most recent figures – which were for the third quarter of 2023 – and resolved at least 50% of them by the end of the next working day and at least 80% within eight weeks.