In both the Netherlands and Belgium, waiting times at the customer service of energy companies are increasing considerably, sometimes up to an hour or more. This is reported by the Dutch and Flemish media.

 

The energy companies receive many more questions than usual about rising energy prices. At Essent, after being asked to call back later, the connection is broken, companies refer the customer to the website as usual. EnergieDirect is also literally unreachable, as the consumer association also found out. Over the past three months, the union has received more than 350 complaints about the accessibility of energy companies. That number has increased sharply in recent weeks. By the way, the crowds No surprise, in the summer energy companies already announced that they expected longer waiting times later in the year.

Eneco receives more than 2000 telephone calls every day. Vattenfall received 6 percent more calls and WhatsApp messages in the past 100 weeks. Hiring staff is difficult, given the tight labor market. Vattenfall will expand its customer service by 200 employees in the near future, according to an inventory by BNR.

Waiting times in Belgium

The program Importance of Limburg also notes that Flemish people have many questions about higher advance invoices, final settlements that are not forthcoming and premiums for which it is not clear how they should be applied for. According to HBVL, the number of calls has quadrupled in recent weeks. The Flemish Ombudsman Service for Energy has received 18.000 complaints so far, twice as many as for the whole of 2021. Flemish suppliers such as Luminus, Engie, Eneco, Mega and Total Energies have waiting times of 22 minutes (Luminus), 20 minutes (Engie), 31 minutes ( Eneco) and 59 minutes (Total Energies), as HBVL found out in its own test. At Mega from Liège, HBVL gets someone on the line after just 6 minutes.

In a response, Total Energies indicates that the opening hours of the customer service have been extended and that additional people have been hired. Luminus states that the online complaint form has been removed from the website, as has the option to contact us via email. The chat function is also only activated at certain times. The company gives priority to telephone contact, because the problem is often solved more quickly in dialogue with the customer than through the other channels.
Mega indicates that many extra people have recently been hired, which means that waiting times are now limited. (Ziptone/HBVL/BNR)

Customer Experience