Big Six energy giant SSE has been fined £1 million for issuing inaccurate and misleading annual statements to pre-payment meter customers between 2014 and 2015, regulator Ofgem has announced.
Ofgem said an investigation found that between June 2014 and September 2015, SSE sent out 1.15 million inaccurate and misleading annual statements to 580,000 pre-payment meter customers.
Due to an IT coding error, these annual statements had inaccurate information on the alternative cheaper tariff available to customers and inaccurate estimates of how much they could save annually by switching to them, Ofgem said.
Some statements also overestimated the annual savings the customers could make by changing their pre-payment meter to a standard credit meter paying by direct debit, as well as by moving to paperless billing.
Ofgem added that SSE failed to act promptly to put things right and also failed to communicate adequately with affected customers.