CRANE ON THE CASE naughty and nice list 2023: The firms that have treated customers best… and worst

From struggling to get parcels and letters delivered, to battling with madcap energy bills and being ‘debanked,’ there has been plenty for us to complain about this year. 

As This is Money’s consumer champion and the writer of the weekly Crane on the Case column, my inbox has swelled under the weight of readers asking for my help standing up to retailers, banks, parking firms, airlines and more. 

These are the firms which have yielded the most complaints from This is Money readers in 2023 – as well as those who have been good eggs. 

We can’t take companies to task without your help, so if you want to air a grievance – or praise a firm for doing the right thing – see below for how to get in touch.  

He’s making a list: Crane on the Case looks at which firms have been naughty – or nice – when it comes to customer service this year

This is Money’s naughty list…

The debankers – Barclays and HSBC

While it was Nigel Farage being debanked by Coutts for his political views that first hit the headlines, our investigations revealed that the issue went much deeper than that.

Back in July, I reported on a sad case where an elderly couple had been left without any access to cash for seven months after HSBC closed their only bank account.

Unable to sign up to a new bank due to a lack of ID, they couldn’t pay in the £35,000 cheque they had been sent by HSBC – representing all their money in the world. They couldn’t access their pensions and were living off leftover food in the freezer.

Later, I was contacted by a community garden group to say its Barclays account had been shut down after it failed ‘know your customer’ checks, despite banking with Barclays for 40 years. 

That spiralled into a much bigger story, where clubs, charities and even a male voice choir told us access to their accounts had also been taken away. 

Emails continue to roll in on from disgruntled and debanked readers – and rest assured that I am still on the case.  

Bad reviews for Barclays: This is Money has reported on many people, charities and clubs being ‘debanked’ by the lender this year 

Parcel pandemonium – Royal Mail, UPS and Evri

Between Royal Mail delays and shoddy service from parcel firms, getting letters and packages where they need to go been no mean feat in 2023. 

Delivery service Evri was named the UK’s most disliked parcel firm in a survey by regulator Ofcom in December – but it is fair to say none of them covered themselves in glory. Only 26 per cent of Evri’s customers said they were satisfied with its contact processes, but even the ‘best’ performer, FedEx, only achieved 58 per cent.

Earlier this year I revealed how Evri sent a reader’s son an empty box instead of his Christmas present – and by May the firm still hadn’t put things right. 

Another case I highlighted was UPS charging a reader an eye-watering £441 to send a boat sail in the post – something I didn’t know was even possible – as opposed to the agreed £35.  

Let’s hope there is less delivery firm-induced disappointment on Christmas morning this year. 

Bill blunders – Ovo Energy

There is one clear winner this year when it came to the amount of emails in my inbox, and that was Ovo Energy. 

To date, around 600 customers have been in touch – most of them to ask for help sorting out maddening bills which they believe simply cannot be correct. 

It started in February, when a reader from London was billed almost £33,000 for energy use in his two-bed flat. 

Then, I reported on a pensioner who wrote to me in distress as she simply couldn’t make sense of what she was being charged. 

This led to a flood of people getting in touch with similar stories. I took dossiers of these complaints to the firm on two occasions, resulting in tens of thousands being won back for readers. 

If Crane on the Case gets a Christmas wish this year, it is that people get billed correctly for the energy they use. Surely it cannot be that hard. 

Energy-sapping: Readers emailed in their droves to tell us about their struggles trying to understand their Ovo Energy bills – and get them corrected

Car calamities – Private parking firms, RAC and Sheila’s Wheels

This is Money has long kept an eye on the activities of private parking firms, some of which seem to take any opportunity to fleece well-meaning drivers. 

But their antics were a particular bugbear for readers this year. One of the most memorable was this case in which a reader got a £60 penalty charge notice while he waited for cup of coffee in a McDonald’s drive-thru. 

Thankfully, the firm in question, Group Nexus, saw sense and not only refunded the charge, but also amended the rules on the car park in question to make sure it didn’t happen again.  

Congestion and toll charges were also the cause of consternation, with this column getting thousands in fines written off for a reader in this case concerning Transport for London’s ULEZ. 

Breakdown and insurance firms came in for criticism too, for example when the RAC lost this reader’s car and Sheila’s Wheels left a flooded car languishing on a driveway for a month following Storm Babet. 

An expensive coffee: A reader got a £60 penalty charge notice while waiting to buy a hot drink in a McDonalds’ drive-thru queue

Aggravating airlines – British Airways, Ryanair and Booking.com

It is hard to believe, but more than three years since the pandemic began people are still waiting for refunds for flights that were cancelled due to Covid.

As recently as last month, I reported on a case where a reader – now too ill to fly – was refused by British Airways when he asked to swap a voucher for cash.  

BA also upset some of its most loyal customers by seemingly losing track of their hard-collected Avios points.

In another especially sad case, I helped a reader get a refund from Ryanair and Booking.com when his brother passed away before his stag party. 

… and three nice ones  

Nationwide’s cash tip for customers

Britain’s biggest building society handed out £100 payments to some of its members back in May after raking in record profits.

Some 3.4million eligible members split £340million through its new Fairer Share scheme, which it now hopes to repeat every year. 

Send-up: Nationwide lampooned high street banks with the help of Dominic West, star of The Crown and The Wire

It did leave plenty of customers miffed, as they needed to hold two products with the bank to qualify – meaning only a quarter of people did. But for those who got it, it was a welcome bonus as households battled soaring inflation. 

It also made building society Nationwide stand out against the big banks, who have come under increased criticism for raking it in from higher interest rates – and not passing on the benefits to their loyal customers. 

Nationwide also rebranded in October and launched an ad campaign promoting its pledge to keep its high street branches open, which has attracted the ire of some of its rivals due to Dominic West’s caricature of a sleazy bank boss. 

Iceland’s lack of a Christmas ad

There was a time when seeing the annual crop of supermarket Christmas ads was a much-anticipated festive tradition. 

But their efforts have gone largely unnoticed this year,  perhaps because they don’t put as much effort into them as they used to or because their customers simply have bigger things to worry about, not least how they are going to afford Christmas at all. 

Supermarket Iceland pulled a PR master stroke when it announced in its latest results that it wasn’t spending any money on a glitzy ad, and instead pouring the millions it would have spent into reducing prices for cash-strapped customers. 

It follows the grocer handing out vouchers and money-off deals for vulnerable customers last year, in another example of looking after its loyal shoppers. 

Ice work: Supermarket Iceland ditched a flashy Christmas ad this year and instead decided to put money into slashing its prices for customers

Octopus being the good guys of energy

I’ve noticed a marked trend among the emails I get from readers who are at the end of their tether with their energy firms this year. 

When people mention wanting to switch supplier, they overwhelmingly say they want to move to Octopus. Existing customers praise it for its clear billing and responsive staff on the phone. 

With 6.6million customers on its books, the firm certainly isn’t immune to criticism and I do get some complaints, too. But if my email inbox is anything to go by, it must be doing something right – or is at least the best of a bad bunch. 

With its acquisition of Shell Energy now complete, Octopus is now Britain’s second-largest energy supplier and within touching distance of the top dog British Gas. 

The question now is whether it can keep up the good service in 2024, even as its customer base swells ever further in size.