Problems with British Gas

DaveMurphy

This is a somewhat long and complicated situation so I'll try to summarise as best I can.

In 1999 I moved into a property and set up direct debits with the utility companies which were paid on time and in full until late 2001 after I unfortunately became ill and had to leave work. This was due to stress related issues which resulted in a short period of hospitalisation.

At some point during 2001 I apparently transferred both gas & electricity to London Electric - I'm not sure on the details, having suffered a psychotic break druing the period in question, and thus began a horrendous chain of madness relating to bills.

When I first received a bill from LE I phoned them to query why I was getting said bills since I had no recollection of asking to be transferred. The agent I spoke to said it would be returned to the original supplier but this didn't happen - I was later told that they couldn't do this with an account which had an outstanding balance. Eventually, LE finally admitted that the account was in fact an erroneous transfer and returned the accounts to British Gas ... in late 2004!

British Gas then began sending demands to "The Occupier" for quite frankly ridiculous amounts of money which obviously I had neither the means or, after such ill treatment from both companies, the motivation to pay. I made several attempts to arrange a payment plan but was met with a wall of "pay in full or have a prepayment meter fitted" - agents I spoke to refused to even attempt to estimate my current usage. They did go to court to obtain a warrant for the prepayment meter on 2 occasions but I went to court, explained the situation to their agent at court and he was able to advise me on the Fuel Direct Scheme and the British Gas Energy Trust.

Eventually I managed to set up payments through the Fuel Direct scheme (after several false starts due to being on incapacity benefit rather than income support or JSA) and get placed on the "essentials" tariff which continued until March of 2008 when a medical review decided that I was no longer ill enough to be in receipt of incapacity benefit. Luckily I had the support of friends and family for the horrendous length of time it took for an appeal and eventual reinstatement of benefits - it took close to 5 months just to get income support at a reduced rate, then a further 4 before the appeal hearing and return of incapacity benefit. Obviously this messed up the Fuel Direct payments with no benefits to make payments from and also later, even when benefits were reinstated there was a great deal of messing around due to claims being closed and reopened when returning to the benefits I was on before. Despite several requests for forms from the energy trust, none ever arrived.

I finally managed to gain access to the British Gas online account system earlier this year. This allowed me to see the actual bills for usage and make payments directly - I mad some payments of the actual bill amounts plus a little to cover at least some of the arrears and ignored the demand letters for the full amount.

In August I moved property and now have gas & electric from a different supplier whose bills I am paying in full. This leaves British Gas as a non priority debt so I was hoping to be able to formulate some reasonable payment plan since they no longer have the ability to make threats or demand the installation of a prepayment meter. How wrong I was.

First I received final bills for £1228.63 on electric and £495.97 on gas. While I was still working out my finances and attempting to figure out what I could afford to repay they sent me completely different final bills for £2297.61 on electric and £1639.19 on gas with no explanation or reference to the earlier final bills. Not only that but a default notice has appeared on my credit record, obviously for the larger amounts.

Now I'm basically looking for some advice on how best to deal with this. I have never actually signed any contracts with British Gas and will certainly never do business with them in the future after the fiasco of the last 5 years ( 9 if you include the nonsense with London Electric). I received no actual bills from British Gas throughout this period, only demands for large amounts with no explanation of the period they were supposedly for or apparently any record of the account prior to 2001.

Really I feel that I have been stonewalled, bullied and lied to by British Gas since 2005 and tend towards the opinion that they should just write off the debt as an apology for the mental anguish I've suffered attempting to make a reasonable payment arrangement. I offered to pay for what I was using plus ~ £3 per week towards arrears on each account. I was told that it was either some £100 a week on each account or a prepayment meter ( with a further £175 charge - obviously more than my entire benefits. Given that they were prepared to accept around £25 per week for *both* accounts on Fuel Direct it seems rather insane that they would attempt to force me to pay almost 10 times that and refuse to negotiate.

In hindsight I should have insisted on only dealing with them in writing and kept a paper trail but I was naive enough to believe what I was told by their agents on the phone.

SwanJon

Without getting into the background, You should send them an SOA, and offer to make regular payments of an amount you can afford. Get this in as soon as possible. You could also ask for confirmation of where the balances came from.
You have used gas an electricity, and there were times when you weren't paying for it, so there will be some balance, and they are entitled to ask for it.

The suppliers don't run the Fuel Direct scheme - it's the benefits agency
I work at British Gas, but haven't dealt with this kind of thing for a while,

DaveMurphy

Thanks for your reply, it's really not that helpful unfortunately.

My basic problems are these.

1. Both London Electricity and British Gas dealt appallingly with an erroneous transfer.

2. British Gas refused to negotiate a reasonable payment plan, preferring to make threats instead.

Whether or not the suppliers run the Fuel Direct scheme the fact remains that it took several years for British Gas to inform me that such a thing existed and were prepared to accept *reasonable* payments through said scheme. Their bullying tactics and appalling customer service caused me considerable distress.

I'm looking for advice on how best to complain and get this matter resolved to my satisfaction. I certainly have no intention of acknowledging a debt which somehow doubled in the course of a week.

Joyful

You should ask in writing to find out how the balance got to the stage it is at.

Normally when an erroneous Transfer takes place the previous company takes it back and bills it from the day it left. You need to find out if prior to this it was billed as an estimate or not then check it started again with the same reading. The company would have then allowed you time to pay but possibly due to your circumstances you offered too low an amount so they could not set you up on a payment plan. This is when it would have been suggested you get a PP meter installed. There would only have been a charge for this if actioned under warrant. When people come off Fuel Direct and cannot pay their balance a PP meter is always advised.

You also need to check that the closing read for BG and the start read for your new supplier are the same.

I would also advise a visit to the CAB to do a Financial statement which you can show your ability to pay.

DaveMurphy

Well, the balance got to the stage it's at through a combination of an erroneous transfer taking 4 years to action plus the refusal of British Gas to send me bills of current usage. At one point I was told by an agent that they didn't issue bills to accounts so far in arrears All I ever received were demands for crazy sums.

It really didn't help that I wasn't in the best of mental health for most of this nightmare saga.

How much information would I be able to obtain from British Gas on the account? Is it likely that I would be able to obtain records of the entire account usage, billing tariffs and bills which should have been issued for the period in question?

A PP meter is completely inappropriate for someone allegedly guaranteed a supply due to illness. Refusal to agree an affordable repayment plan is completely unacceptable - what criteria do they use to decide if a payment offer is toolow?

Joyful

A PP meter is not inappropriate. You were being offered a guaranteed supply. It was up to you to pay for it.Normally someone will be given 1 year to pay off a balance. In certain circumstances 2 years.If you had a high balance and could only pay an extra £3 this would not have been acceptable but they would have set up a repayment on a PP meter over a longer time for you.

You can pay a fee to have all information on your account under data protection sent to you. Contact BG for details.

I understand that having Mental Health issues must have caused you extra problems but it does not seem as if BG did anything wrong. They should have been able to give you 1 bill from the period the supply was sent back to them to the date of billing you and then 3 monthly after that. If you did not get this info you will need to write to find out why not.

DaveMurphy

We'll probably have to agree to disagree on the appropriateness of a PP meter and whether or not British Gas have done anything wrong.

In my case a prepayment meter had the very real risk of adversely affecting my illness and I fail to see how you can fit a prepayment meter and still guarantee a supply. All you're doing is avoiding responsibilty. (not meant as a personal attack, obviously I mean British Gas here)

As a vulnerable customer I should never have been treated the way I was and more information should have been given to me from day 1.

From the British Gas website customer commitment page (sorry apparently I'm too new to post links)

Our aim is to make life safe, warm and comfortable for all our customers but particularly for those on low incomes, older people and those with a disability.

Vulnerable customers should be made aware of your "innovative programmes and initiatives" and customer service staff should be trained to deal with said customers in a manner more in keeping with your alleged aims.

I was not made aware of your Winter Fuel Rebate, British Gas Home Energy Care, British Gas Energy Trust until this situation had persisted for several years. I was certainly not given any "practical support and advice to help customers who are having problems paying for their gas and electricity."

Somewhat bizarrely the link to your debt management site appears to lead to an american site. Perhaps you could point that out to someone appropriate. Again, sorry, I'm too new to post links.

I do think it's rather inappropriate for a British Gas Employee to be thanking another BG employee for a useful post. It's hardly objective - aren't there forum guidelines against this sort of thing? If not I'd suggest there should be and perhaps even company guidelines for forum posting. I imagine you probably have some guidelines already to avoid the potential for admitting any fault on the part of the company you work for.

Anyway, in the interests of moving back to a more productive line of discussion. Is there anywhere I can obtain information on what should have happened in the case of an erroneous transfer?

In the normal course of events a 1 or 2 year repayment plan would seem reasonable. In my case the initial debt was accrued over nearly 4 years due to London Electricity's refusal to accept that there had been an ET and my refusal to pay them on the grounds that there had been. I'm sure I've seen guidelines somewhere which state that a reasonable time period for a repayment plan should be the time it has taken for that debt to accrue. Any ideas on where that might have been?

Joyful

The guidelines you quote are if the supply has only had 1 company involved. Normally what happens is the customer who refuses to pay the incorrect company keeps the money aside or if the wrong company gets paid they return it to the customer. The customer then pays this money to the original company and a payment plan is set up to include any shortfall as I advised above. The problem seems to be that your debt was too high because of the length of time and I assume you did not contribute to the 4 years worth of payments when the supply returned to BG.

I am sorry that you were not advised of the help that BG could offer because of your Mental Health. There is a lot of training ongoing at this moment in time to change things in this area which is working.

The way to be productive and move forward is to use the advice I gave in my first posting. You have now had an interest free loan for 4 years so need to come to an agreement to pay this but of course will want written proof that it is correct.

You will find on this Forum that it is usual to thank people if you agree with their postings irrespective of where they work. Any one who works for a particular company will always speak on their own behalf ( unless they have the company and Martins authority) but because I and others have worked in different departments we pass on our knowledge to help people as much as we can.

SwanJon

DaveMurphy wrote: »

I do think it's rather inappropriate for a British Gas Employee to be thanking another BG employee for a useful post. It's hardly objective

Why wouldn't it be objective? Are you making sweeping generalisations here?
I quite often thank someone to show that I agree with what they have said. Many a time I have been thinking of responding to a post, only to find that someone else has said pretty much the same thing - I use the thanks as a ditto.

In this case I think this may be a part of the problem.

DaveMurphy wrote: »

my refusal to pay them

Premier_2

As much as I dislike BG myself, I must say that the majority of the posts both Joyful & SwanJon make on this board, particularly with regard to BG, is top notch.
Based on this, I sometimes am left wondering if it's not the BG staff themselves that don't care, but rather the restrictive practices & procedures that they perhaps have to work under (not uncommon in huge organisations). Although just like any large organisation, BG, or worse still, the third parties they somethimes employ, certainly do have some people that, ...well, ...er... shall we say 'would benefit from further training'.

I see nothing in this thread from either Joyful or SwanJon that I would disagree with.

... and no I don't work for BG despite what some posters believe/post.

factoryworker

Dave Murphy;

firstly i dont think it helps your cause to question Joyful etc's postings; yes they work for BG, and have admitted so, but they post in their own time, to part help and knowledge, probably because of the limitations of their employer, not any limitations they have - they also do so at the risk of disciplinary action if their employer is reading this (and they do).

Personally i ditest BG, but couldn't agree more with postings made, or find fault. You may be angry but your being angry at the wrong people, and others reading, like me, will be less inclined to find possible solutions for you. To your situation:

Error transfers are a nightmare for all concerned, and whilst some suppliers are less keen to agree to one than others, once agreed ALL suppliers are very good at 1) accepting supply back irrespective of debt 2) understand that debt cannot be found in one go and will stretch considerably payment plans to accomodate this. You lambast LE but my reading of your notes suggests you did change supplier, but they returned as goodwill; the other point already raised is that one would reasonably expect you to put the money aside that wasn't paid to either energy company/ and-or was repayed by LE towards your returned BG supply; to take the view that someone has made a mistake and not pay suggests more wanting a free ride and chancing your arm than vulnerability. When BG did/didn't agree to possible help/payment plans this would be very much clouded by your lack of interest in maintaining payments. My sympathies are low with you; energy companies make mistake, and can be cumbersome tankers sometimes but their are individuals who will go all the way for you - but only if you do all you can. Notwithstanding that......

you should reread the gas/elec forum for information regaring error transfers and billing which may help you have some arrears wiped-you need to make the effort to find it; also other than BG Trust, check who your water board is as many have funds to pay off non water bills; also you mention mental illness- check with people like MIND who have funds, and if you are child of serviceman check SSAFAssociation for assistance/grants.

Nowhere in this posting do you state what you believe your average gas/elec bill is/how many Kwh's you use; could you post please?

I wish you well, but frankly, i think you have too take responsibilities for your own (in)actions rather than blame someone else-unusually i think BG have down well by you; you need to address the issue going forward; get you data file from BG to check all is correct, bide your time until debt is paid and look and reducing your usage (hence increasing debt repayment), and then change supplier; i would also advise taking meter reads first of the month every month, to take charge and ensure it is correct going forward