Don't be afraid to ring us if you think you have a complaint we can handle

When you call us you will initially speak to an Enquiry Officer who will be able to tell you if we can help. If your complaint is something we can consider, the Enquiry Officer will make sure that we fully understand your problem and fill in a complaint form for you.

The complaint form will be posted or emailed out for you to check, sign and return to us. When you are checking the form, make sure that we have accurately summarised your complaint.

When you return the form to us, make sure it is signed in the appropriate place and send with it copies of all the information you have about your complaint. Your signature on the form gives authority to energy company to send us all the information it holds relating to your complaint. We will be unable to return any original documents you send to us.

When we receive your signed complaint form and we have checked that everything is still okay, we will begin to investigate your complaint. This process can take up to six weeks from the date we receive your form.

Check-list for contacting the Energy Ombudsman:

• Is your energy company a member of the Energy Ombudsman?
• Have you complained to the energy company and made every effort to complete its complaints procedure?
• Have you received a "deadlock" letter? Or...
• Have 8 weeks passsed since you first made the complaint to the energy company? If your company became a member of the Energy Ombudsman on or after 1 October 2008, it will have up to 12 weeks to sort out the problem for you.
• The deadline for bringing a complaint to our attention is nine months from the date you first told the company about the problem, however, if you have recently received a deadlock letter from the company, we may still be able to help.
• If your complaint is about your company's sales activity, did the problem occour after 1 September 2007?
• If you complaint is about a physical problem with the supply of gas or electricity to your home, for example, power cuts, did the problem occur after 1 April 2008?

If you can answer yes to these questions then it is likely that we can consider your complaint. If you want to go through a more thorough check, you can use the online complaint form on this site which will guide you through our process. If you want to speak or write to us, please contact us.

Access to the the Energy Ombudsman is free and we are entirely independent.