HELP! £1000 final bill from british gas out of nowhere!

scotcat

Hi,

I switched from BG to Scot Power in June. We were on the click 5 tariff, we paid DD and I would always pay any extra due on the account if we were in debit. Now I have out of nowhere £1000 due on the account. I phoned to find out where this came from and they said the amount we were paying monthly was not large enough to cover our bills (obviously ) and that we would just have to pay it. They couldn't explain why this had never shown up before, why they hadn't increase the monthly direct debit earlier or why they only noticed this when closing the account. I'm totally confused and absolutley furious. I've gone over the massive bill they've sent me now and they're sums are correct but as I have online billing I can't see what they sent previously as they've taken them all off.
Has anyone been in a similar situation? I'm not paying the bill until I get a reasonalbe explanation.

scotcat

ALIBOBSY

I would ask for copies of your last couple of bills, if you always cleared any debit and always made sure up to date readings were used on your bills it sounds as though they have made an error. Did you keep your last meter reading before you switched as well?

good luck

ali x

Dizzie77

Hi Scotcat - I've never been with BG, but I can advise that the first thing you need to do is to check the meter readings. When I left Npower in february, they landed me with a bill of £180 (not quite as dramatic as yours!!) and I just couldn't figure it out...
It turned out that they had estimated my leaving figure..! which was considerably higher than my actual usage....so check this isn't the case with BG.

I would then ask BG (in writing) to explain how they have come up with the figure - especially if the "extra" has been calculated on a higher rate than your original plan.

Nothing to immediately remedy the situation, unfortunately, but I would write to them straight away and get them to sort it out.

Incidentally....I'm still trying to close my account with Npower....I left them in February, and I am still waiting for them to give me a final bill....!!!

Good Luck....and if you need any assistance with writing the letter, let me know.

scotcat

Hi Guys,

Thanks for you replies.

The problem doesn't seem to be with the final reading but that they didn't bill us correctly in the first year (we were with them 18 months). I'm kicking myself for not printing off all the bills but I thought the point of paper free billing was that they would keep them all online, not remove them when they realised they were wrong. I just can't understand how it didn't show up before.

Dizzie77 if you could give me a very brief outline of a complaints letter I'd really appreciate it, I'm not going down without a fight or an apology!

scotcat

Dizzie77

send me a PM with your e-mail address and I'll send you the basics. Happy to check it for you before you send it too.
:beer:

spiro

Is it possible that all you bills had been based on estimates and that this is now the catch up bill?

1carminestocky

It's rather a large 'catch-up' amount for 18 months, though. Almost the average charge for 12 months total usage.

scotcat

They took 5 or 6 readings over the 18 months, they just don't seem to have actually used them to calculate the bill - grrrrrrrrrrr

johnllew

scotcat wrote: »

They took 5 or 6 readings over the 18 months, they just don't seem to have actually used them to calculate the bill - grrrrrrrrrrr

Didn't you check your bills to see if they tallied with your meter readings? Basic stuff really.

scotcat

No obviously we didn't. I foolishly thought since they paid people to do it they were doing it correctly, I was wrong.

scotcat

It turns out that British Gas were never fully sure of our start reading and only on our departure worked out how much we had used. Never during the 18 months did they contact us to share any of their confusion with us but instead wait until we left and billed us for over a grand, 3 weeks before Christmas. I've just spent 40 mins on the phone being told that I should have paid more all along - even though they provided us with no evidence that we need to. Never trust a power company. Our new supplier Scottish Power have started billing us for the wrong meter, so when we sent them our latest reading they said we owed £8000 for 2 1/2 months gas usage.

Wood burning stove anyone.