Clear communications

To earn and maintain their trust, it is essential that customers feel our communications with them are clear and fair - from honest marketing and sales to straightforward billing and online communications. Upholding consistently high standards in our sales and marketing helps to ensure our customers have confidence in us.

Responsible marketing

We have specialist compliance teams that work in collaboration with our marketing teams and agencies to ensure that all advertising, sales and promotional materials represent the company and its services accurately and clearly. In addition, all British Gas customer-facing operations comply with the UK Financial Services Authority's 'Treating Customers Fairly' principles.

It is never our intention to mislead the public. We take our obligations under advertising codes very seriously, monitor complaints and work diligently to rectify any misunderstandings. In the UK, advertising codes are enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and we report the number of upheld complaints each year in our data centre.

Ethical sales

We ensure that we always equip our customers with the information they need to make fully informed purchase decisions. Information requirements are defined by the Financial Conduct Authority for insurance and by OFGEM and the OFT for energy and non-insurance. Our compliance with those requirements is reviewed on an ongoing basis through a series of reviews and meetings. Where we find that we have not delivered the service our customers expect, we have effective complaints management systems and provide all customers with access to the relevant Ombudsman.

In the UK, we do not conduct unsolicited doorstep selling. We only visit customers at home with a prior appointment. In North America, we are subject to stringent consumer protection laws and mandatory sales processes and we work with legislators to implement tougher consumer protection laws, particularly in markets where misrepresentation has been an issue historically.

Despite our efforts, we do still receive complaints. Typical complaints about sales in our sector include issues such as inadequate explanation of contracts and payment terms. Data on complaints performance is available in our data centre.

Billing and online communications

Bills are our most regular form of direct customer communication, and provide a channel for sharing useful information to help customers understand their energy use and how to reduce it. We are working to simplify the design of our bills, present information more intuitively and reduce the number of tariffs we offer to make choosing the best tariff even easier. In the UK, British Gas provides an online tariff checker to help customers find the best tariff for their needs.

We also offer a range of billing options for customers' convenience, including joint dual fuel bills, pre-paid billing and online services as well as bills in different languages and accessible formats. See data on uptake of alternative communications in the data centre.