British gas demanding £500

i3lade4life

Me and my wife have our gas & electricity through BG. We were paying £25 for gas & £18 for Electricity. Due to a job change (and the change in pay dates) we were unable to pay our direct debit. We called them up on the day before payment was due to come out, they said it was too late to change the billing date. We was advised to cancel the DD and they would do the same, and after a week or so we could call up and reinstate the DD. Which we thought was fine.
A month later we get a bill saying that we owe approx £500 and we would have to pay ASAP.
Once again we call up, and we were told due to cancelling the DD we are no longer eligible for the that rate of pay and now have to pay £200 p/m until the debt is cleared.
We have explained that this is completley out of our budget, but they do not seem to care and could not offer any other payment plan.
Has anyone else had this problem? or can anyone offer any advice?

Sorry for the rant!!!!

KimYeovil

If you want longer to pay then you will have to switch to prepayment meters (with the self-cutting-off and higher expenses that they create.)

It is up to you to be sensible and check your meter readings and your bills. You should have known you were four or five hundred pounds in debt - that high a disparity would be obvious to anyone.

Either find the £500 to pay off over the next quarter or it is keycard hell this winter for you.

You have learned a valuable lesson for the future - read your meters and don't ignore the 'good fortune' of ridiculously cheap instalments.

Premier_2

You missed a payment of £43 and you now have a debt of £500?

So you owed £457 before the missed payment.

This time of year you should be in credit, not debit, in order to fund the winter consumption.

If you can't afford to pay, the company will be installing a prepayment meter. Beat them to it and ask them to do so asap to put yourself back into some sort of financial control.

Joyful

Why did you not contact them after the week as agreed? This would have shown you keeping your end of the bargain. Had you missed any payments before this?

I would suggest the PP meter option. It will allow you to spread your debt.

Fire_Fox

So by the time you got the letter demanding payment you'd missed two DDs? £43 for energy bills is unlikely to cover your annual usage, so you haven't been reading the meters?

KimYeovil

Steady on, people. I think my first reply chastising the poor boy for not reading his meter is enough. No need for everyone else to form a pig-pile.

i3lade4life

Its fair to say I havent kept track of the meters. But BG havent ever tried to inform us that our DD payments arent meeting the annual usage, despite having the meter's read regularly.
My biggest greivance is them demanding a stupid ammount of money without any other alternatives.
Looks like I will have to go onto the Prepayment meters and use the excuse of jogging to the shops every few days as a reason for some much needed excercise

Derek_Duval

British gas gave me stupied low DD's of £25 for gas & £20 for electricity, although I used almost 3 times this amount. This went on for 20 months, I kept an eye on it & stoozed the money (kept it in the bank earning interest). The debt rose to £780, & as my savings interest rates were rubbish I gave in & asked them to reassess by DD, taking it up to £200 a month combined (over 4 times the amount). I'm not sure how much they would have let the debt raise to. Luckly I has aware, & had made a few quid out of it, but I do feel for consumers who have fell into this trap without knowing, trusting british gas to correctly reassess ther DD's. I suspect they delibrately do this to keep customers by misleading them into thinking they're cheaper, then when they discover the debt, they can't afford to pay it in one chunk so they're stuck. Surely Ofgem must be aware of this?

C_Mababejive

Utility companies are not obliged to offer credit for fuel. They only offer credit to those whom they deem credit worthy.

For anyone who fins themselves with a large bill that they cant pay,i;d say they need to get prepayment meters in to stop further accrual of debt and take control of the situation.

Joyful

How many times do we hear that companies want to get people in debt to keep them and then companies setting payments too high to get extra money from them? The companies just cannot win:rolleyes:. Of course companies are in business to make a profit- not to have people owing them money.

A good customer is one who pays the correct price for the energy they use. Most companies will either ask for your home information to set a DD or perhaps go by previous occupiers usage. If they have no info from you this will be an estimate. Usually Payment plans are assessed either after 6 or 12 months. Customers will still get statements so can see whether their payments are covering their usage before the assessment times. It is then up to the Customer to call and advise their DD needs changed. Then all these situations would stop occurring.

Premier_2

KimYeovil wrote: »

Steady on, people. I think my first reply chastising the poor boy for not reading his meter is enough. No need for everyone else to form a pig-pile.

To be fair, I hadn't seen your reply whilst I was composing and sending my reply (sent just 2 minutes later)

It could also be that Joyful hadn't seen either of our replies when she composed her initial response.


If that was the case, it's interesting that we all came up with what essentially was the same response. :cool: