Energy companies rated

Good Energy is the best energy supplier, according to the 2012 Which? Switch energy satisfaction survey, hotly followed by Utility Warehouse, Ecotricity, Ovo Energy and Ebico.

The results show that small providers are streets ahead of Britain's six biggest energy suppliers, British Gas, EDF, Eon,Npower, Scottish & Southern and Scottish Power. Npower languished at the bottom of the table with a customer satisfaction score of just 46%.

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Which? satisfaction survey 2012 results

Our Which? Switch survey rates 16 UK gas and electricity suppliers through the biggest publicly available survey of its kind. It gathers opinions from more than 8,000 energy customers and rates energy suppliers on a range of measures including customer service, value for money and accuracy of bills.

Each energy supplier receives a customer score based on overall satisfaction and the likelihood a customer would recommend it to a friend.

2012 energy companies satisfaction survey
Supplier	Customer service	Value for money	Bills (accuracy and clarity)	Helping you save energy	Customer score
England, Scotland and Wales
1. Good Energy					84%
2. Utility Warehouse					78%
3. Ecotricity					77%
4. Ovo Energy					76%
5. Ebico					73%
6. Marks & Spencer Energy					57%
7. Sainsbury's Energy					54%
8. SSE					51%
9. British Gas					47%
= Eon					47%
11. First Utility					46%
12. Scottish Power					44%
13. EDF Energy					43%
14. Npower					41%
Northern Ireland
1. Airtricity	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	53%
2. Power NI (NIE)	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	42%

Table notes

Customer score combines overall satisfaction and likelihood to recommend. Weighted overall average is 47% (weighted to market share of each energy company). There are no star ratings for companies in Northern Ireland because the market is different from the market in Britain and star ratings would not be comparable.

Sample sizes: Good Energy (37), Utility Warehouse (243), Ecotricity (37), Ovo Energy (116), Ebico (90), M&S Energy (68), Sainsbury's Energy (45), SSE (1,278), British Gas (2,422), Eon (1,122), First Utility (110), Scottish Power (828), EDF Energy (630), Npower (966), Airtricity (51) and Power NI (111).

Good news for small energy suppliers

Though smaller gas and electricity companies generally do better than household names, First Utility doesn't do as well as the other smaller suppliers. It ranks in the bottom half of the table, along with the 'big six'. It received the lowest rating of all companies for customer service, with only two stars.

But satisfaction with the smaller players isn't enough to pull the average overall satisfaction above 47% - one of the lowest of all sectors covered by Which? surveys.

Other small companies, including Spark Energy, Utilita, Green Energy UK, LoCO2 Energy and Co-operative Energy did not make it into our table because we received too few responses from their customers.

Bad news for energy giants

Despite dominating the market, the big six suppliers end up in the bottom half of the table, whereas smaller players top the charts. Of the big six energy suppliers, SSE comes first with a customer score of 51%, while Npower comes last with only 41%.

You can find further information about how each company did in the survey by looking at our energy suppliers section, or choosing a company name from the menu on the left of this page.

What about Northern Ireland?

Northern Ireland's results are presented separately in the table. There are no star ratings for companies in NI because the market is different from the market in Britain and star ratings would not be comparable.

The energy market in NI was only recently opened up to competition. NIE has become Power NI and still powers most homes in Northern Ireland (about 700,000). Airtricity, owned by SSE, has recently entered the market, supplying more than 50,000 homes. It did marginally better than Power NI in our survey.

Star ratings explained

We provide each company with a star rating for each measure. One star is the worst and five stars the best. The more stars a company has, the better. We looked at four core areas of satisfaction.

Customer service: how well customers feel they are treated overall.
Value for money: how the supplier is rated for value for money.
Bill accuracy and clarity: how the energy supplier is rated for the accuracy of its bills, and the ease of understanding energy bills from that supplier.
Helping you save energy: the supplier's efforts to encourage customers' to be energy efficient.

The customer score combines overall satisfaction and likelihood of recommending to a friend.

Our customer satisfaction research

In November 2011 we surveyed 8,271 UK adults, who pay for their household energy, about their experience with their gas and electricity suppliers.

The percentage customer satisfaction score is based on the responses consumers gave for both overall satisfaction and their likelihood to recommend the energy supplier to a friend. Both questions are given equal weighting, and only those giving a valid response to both questions are included in the analysis. The responses are analysed and scaled to give a rating from 0-100%.

What's different about Utility Warehouse?

While Utility Warehouse (UW) scores very highly in our survey, it is worth mentioning that it operates a different marketing model from other suppliers. UW makes use of distributors (or agents) who receive commission for signing up new customers. Customers of the UW Discount Club (for a membership fee of between £1.50 and £3.50 a month) can also benefit from the ‘Share and Save Plan’ where customers receive a discount on their bill if they recommended someone else who signs up to UW. 8% of respondents in our survey said they were an agent for UW and 28% said they were receiving a discount for recommending someone else.

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