British Gas "Price Protection 2010" and Pre-payment meter?

andrew-b

Bit of a long one this so please bear with me...

Back in September 2005 we received an email from british gas as we are registered on the house.co.uk website saying we could freeze our electricity price until 2010. We have a pre-payment meter and as far as i remember the house.co.uk website gave the rates for pre-payment meters. We signed up online to the Price Protection 2010 and then heard nothing else until we received two letters in February 2006 - one letter announcing the 1st March 2006 price increase and the second letter confirming the price was protected until April 2010. The Price Protection 2010 letter also had details on the back of the rates we would pay under pre-payment meter.

Earlier this week i was filing the paperwork away and thought i'd check that we could ignore the price increase as i had noticed it said "your meter will be updated asap" (or words to that affect). I phoned up British Gas and was assured that no appointments were due to reprogram our meter! We live in a shared block of flats and the meter is accessible to British Gas without needing entry to our flat (as far as i know all 40 flats are with British Gas as arranged via the housing association).

However we noticed that we'd been needing to top the meter up more regularly, so today i double checked the meter and sure enough found it had been reprogrammed to 11.02p rate 1 (second tier daytime) and 4.49p rate 2 (nighttime) - the 1st March 2006 rates. I checked the Price Protection 2010 letter for the rates for seeboard area which say 8.602p (daytime 2nd tier) and 3.506p (night).

So i phoned up customer service to ask that the meter be reprogrammed to the correct price protected rate and the customer service agent tells me that we can't have price protection 2010 because we have a pre-payment meter!!! Obviously i disputed this rigourously saying i had the letter in front of me with pre-payment rates on it! I demanded i be put through to her supervisor with the result that i have been told her manager would phone me back within the next 4 hours. Whether they will remains to be seen!

I also phoned the telephone number on the Price Protection 2010 letter but they were no help at all and didn't even have access to our records and the guy said he was dealing with their new offers now and that we'd have to dispute it with customer service.

Anyone else on pre-payment with british gas who signed up for Price Protection 2010? If so i'd strongly recommend you check the rates programmed into your meter and post here if it's incorrect for your area.

I've no idea how we are going to sort this out and could really do without the hassle right now. I expect i will have words though with our housing association to see about changing the electricity supply for all 40 flats unless British Gas do stick to their price protection 2010 agreement. If they don't stick to their agreement we fully intend to take the matter further with EnergyWatch, BBC Watchdog and possible court action for breach of contact.

Any advice of how to deal with this or similar experiences would be appreciated.

Andy

smartie1976

I think BG have made an aministrative error regarding sending out the initial e-mail.

Price Freeze 2010 I am pretty sure was never made available to Prepayment customers.

I know for definate that Price Protection 2009 isn't available for PP customers due to "due to the complexity to serve Prepayment customers on this type of product. This is an industry wide issue and similar long term offers from competitors also exclude Prepayment customers."

andrew-b

It can't be an admin error..else why would they have given us all the tables of pre-payment prices both on the website originally and then on a letter backing it up too?! I wouldn't have signed up without checking the prices.. in fact i remember sat down with pen and paper working out if it was worthwhile doing.

Perhaps you are correct that the new Price Protection 2009 (not 2010) isn't available to pre-payment customers which might be what's causing the confusion at Customer services end. However i have the documentation to back up my claim so won't be backing down. If it turns out i'm not capped i will certainly be kicking up a big stink about it on my way out! They can't promise you one thing one minute then back out the next! Unfortunately they seem to hide behind their 0845-number call queue making it difficult to get to speak to the right person.

Andy

andrew-b

Just found this http://www.britishgasnews.co.uk/index.asp?PageID=16&Year=2005&NewsID=675

Subject to availability. Excludes gas prepayment customers. Price Protection 2010 excludes any changes in VAT. British Gas will honour the Price Protection 2010 premium rates unless they are prevented from doing so by the action or anticipated action of any governmental or statutory body

Excludes gas prepayment..but no mention of electricity prepayment.

Andy

andrew-b

Also see http://www.britishgasnews.co.uk/index.asp?PageID=16&Year=2006&NewsID=681
which confirms Price Protection 2009 (not 2010) isn't available on prepayment meters.

Andy

andrew-b

Just got a call back from a British Gas customer service manager. It turns out that we do indeed have Price Protection 2010 on our electricity pre-payment meter. However the way it will work is that the pre-payment meter is set with the current prices. Then when we get our electricity statements we will be billed using the Price Protection 2010 prices and be able to claim the extra cost back later.

It's a roundabout way of doing things and means we end up worse off in the short term as we have to find the money to physically pay the higher prices in the first place! Perhaps British Gas would like to pay us lost interest on the extra money? I somehow doubt they will!

Anyway they are going to send us written confirmation that we are under Price Protection 2010 plus i supplied readings so a new statement is being sent out.
Wish now we hadn't have price protected with them as i'd rather pay a bit more for better customer service! I guess this should be taken as a warning to be wary of price capped electricity/gas deals!

Andy

Cardew

I have the 2010 'offer' letter dated Sept 2005 which is exactly the same wording as post #4 and above. ie excludes gas-prepayment but not electricity pre-payment.

You should have received confirmation by letter "congratulating" you that you were registered for price protection 2010.(mine was dated October 2005) On this letter it clearly shows the pre-payment electricity rates for both single and two rate.

I also got the letter announcing the March 2006 price rise, but also got another letter saying that had been sent in error and that I was confirmed on the 2010 capped/fixed rate.

So there is no doubt that the 2010 offer did cover pre-payment electricity.

As you signed up on line I suspect your problem will be in proving that you applied for for it correctly as you didn't get the 'congratulations' confirmation letter.(unless the letter you got in February was that letter)

If BG say you didn't sign up for the offer I suspect you will have a problem unless you have a record of that signing.

andrew-b

Cardew wrote:

As you signed up on line I suspect your problem will be in proving that you applied for for it correctly as you didn't get the 'congratulations' confirmation letter.(unless the letter you got in February was that letter)

Yes the february letter was the "congratulations" letter you talk of - though as yet we haven't received the "error" letter and we never received the "offer" letter apart from by email. As i said in my last post they have now confirmed we are price protected and I have asked for written confirmation to back it up. The first customer service agent couldn't have looked at our account details as else they would have seen we were price protected until 2010 and saved a lot of hassle!

The amount of incompetence i face daily when dealing with uk companies never ceases to amaze me!

Andy

Cardew

andrew-b wrote:

The amount of incompetence i face daily when dealing with uk companies never ceases to amaze me!

Andy

It is not confined to UK. I spend a lot of time in the USA and the staff in the call centres are often equally incompetent.

I think the problem in many cases is they have to 'handle' a fixed number of calls and have no incentive to deal with the more complicated cases that are likely to be time consuming.

smartie1976

To be fair it does very much depend on which department you get through to.
general 0845 monkeys have to be jack of all trades, master of none.

Once you get through to the correct department then you start getting somewhere.
My partner had a similar problem that she didn't get the "congratulations 2010" letter whereas I did. And I signed her up for it.

She called generic call centre "nothing we can do - no record of it".
Got her to call another office I know deals specifically with correspondence and bingo - problem resolved. it may have been because I work for BG that swayed it, but nontheless she got much better customer service with the different department.