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

TighterThanTwoCoatsOfPain

tbh, i find it hard to believe you honestly didnt realise your power bill was undercharged by £55 EVERY MONTH. how big are your bills that you didnt realise?

Sounds harsh, but sounds more like you thought you were going to get away with it and are now upset that you havent.

logie28

i had the same happen to me, i was landed with a £600 bill from n-power (still hurts ) , i think the above post is a bit harsh, we dont all start off "savvy" with energy companies , or bills for that matter!

Most of us grew up with British Gas, a majority on a ten bob pay as you go meter!!!

I'm not saying this was good or bad, I'm saying these problems are/have been new to us all at one stage or another!!

I believe the energy companies use loopholes to generate cash and keep a grip on customers, in my case massive under estimated bills, i thought i was always in credit, got a big shock.

After the bad press about undercharging and running up huge bills to keep customers locked in , they have reverted to the opposite, still using underhand tactict by over charging.

Like most things in life , we learn from experience/mistakes, usually both!! i naively trusted a multi billion £ established company to charge me fairly and look out for me, reviewing my account!!

I was brought up, if you owe money on your bill pay it, if you dont, your doing a good job with your finances.

Nowadays a good job is not enough, you need a degree in economics to work out tariff prices and estimated/actual use, as well as detective skills to see through their underhand tactics!!

logie28

BTW, i complained, to n-power about my bill, got no where, complained to energy watch. They investigated, found n-power at fault and i was awarded £50 deducted off my bill and a nice apology letter offering me the chance to pay off remainder of balance at an affordable price, it took me two years to pay off, the day i paid off was the day i left, for good!!!

About four years ago.

scotcat

Hi Logie28,

Thanks for the advice, I am going to take my complaint further as well. Having never lived in a property with gas before we didn't know how much we should pay and obviously paid what they billed us (from actual readings they had taken), I'm still not sure how this happened. I can say though that I won't be doing on-line billing anymore as all the previous bills have been taken off our account so they can't even work out what meter readings they were using to bill us. As for those of you who say I was being naive, yes I was, have you never got anything wrong before? I'm not sure how you learn these things unless things go wrong

thanks for all the advice, it's been really helpful

scotcat

chatty123

For the last 5 years I have paid my gas and leccy bills quarterly as they pop thru the door. I check the readings and call them if they need re-calculating. So many times they have been telling us how much we could save if we moved over to DD, so one month i asked them to calculate the monthly dd for gas.( i still had no intention of changing), they came back with £95 a month. my gas bills for last year in total was £300
And they still kept telling me that i could be saving ??% by going to dd. HUH !

I think the way forward now is for all to cancel DD's and go back to paying as the bill pops thru your door like we all used to do. Why should you give the greedy energy co's your money every month to sit in their banks. Let it sit in yours,.