DISSATISFIED gas customers are being urged to contact Jersey Consumer Council as it attempts to “secure a better deal” following an “insulting” compensation pay-out to those affected by the Islandwide outage.
JCC chair Carl Walker added that “everything and anything is on the table”, as he described the gas company’s £11.56 refund as insufficient.
Around 4,000 Island Energy customers were left without gas for up to two weeks in October when a technical fault caused the supply to shut off.
Islanders reacted with shock and outrage when told last Thursday that they would be credited £11.56 to compensate for the temporary lack of supply.
Jersey customers are meanwhile facing a 12% rise in the price of gas from the end of January, equating to about £13.80 per month for an average family house.
Islands Energy Group chief executive Jo Cox defended the gas company’s “goodwill gesture”, saying that there was “no requirement for energy companies in Jersey to have pre-agreed compensation schemes in place” and that the fault was not covered by its insurance.
In a statement shared with the JEP, Mr Walker said his organisation was “gathering evidence with a view to taking action”.
“The council is looking at what options it has available to try to secure the compensation some consumers deserve for the gas outage in October last year,” the statement read.
Mr Walker continued: “We already know of Islanders who went without hot water, could not cook hot meals at home and could not turn on their heating during the outage, so taking three months to come up with an offer of £11.56 is nothing short of an insult to its customers by Island Energy.
“We will now work on behalf of all those affected to try and secure a better deal for them – and everything and anything is on the table at this stage. Once we know how many Islanders we will be representing, we shall choose the best course of action and do our very best.”
The statement also noted that had the energy provider been regulated, as providers in the UK are, it would have had to pay £60 for every day a customer went without gas beyond the first 24 hours.
For the JCC to begin taking action, those impacted are being asked to complete a short online survey “as honestly as possible” to enable the council to assess the extent to which individual households were impacted. The survey is available at consumercouncil.je.
JCC said that if Islanders know of any neighbours or relatives who did not have access to the internet but who were also affected by the outage, they should visit those individuals or call them and complete the survey with them or on their behalf, so that the council could get a fair picture of the situation.
The compensation
The £11.56 payment will be applied in February and amounts to a single month’s standing charge.
Following the announcement, Mrs Cox said: “As there is no requirement for energy companies in Jersey to have pre-agreed compensation schemes in place we have been working with our insurance company to ascertain whether we were covered for this event.
“Unfortunately, as it was a total loss of supply due to circumstances out of our control, the insurance company has confirmed that it will not be covered.
“We will recognise that this is disappointing for our customers and are therefore committed to refunding the entire month of October, rather than just the period of the outage.”
Compensation for commercial and business customers was being assessed on a case-by-case basis.
