Check you’re not shelling out too much! Shell Energy fined £1.4m for letting broadband and phone customers overpay

Shell Energy has been fined £1.4m for failing to tell more than 70,000 phone and broadband customers their contract was coming to an end or let them know about better deals.

An investigation by the regulator Ofcom found the company broke rules introduced in 2020 that mean providers must tell customers their contracts are coming to and end and provide information on shopping around and getting a better price.

What Shell Energy did wrong

Between March 2020 and June 2022, Shell:

• didn’t send end -of-contract notifications and out-of-contract reminders
• sent some end-of-contract notifications with incorrect information, resulting in over 6,000 customers going on to pay more than they were originally quoted

Are you due a refund?

Shell Energy has refunded those customers sent end-of-contract notifications with incorrect information.

But, if you’re still a Shell Energy customer and you had a contract that was due to end between March 2020 and June 2022, you may not have been told your deal was about to expire. This means you could have been automatically moved onto a more expensive package.

If this has happened to you, contact Shell Energy for a refund.

You can also leave Shell Energy penalty-free if you can find a better deal with another company.

If you’re not sure if you’re out of contract, the easiest way to check is to log into your online Shell Energy account.