Why is British Gas Trading on my credit report?

Dolly_ditzy

Ok, so everyone goes on about how you should swap energy supplier. Well I have a warning story!

Began the process of changing from British Gas to EDF in October 2013. BG advised me before Christmas I owed them £300. I telephoned them and asked if I could pay in instalments. Yes, fine of course I could, not a problem. A payment arrangement was set in place.

3 months later I have been refused a loan by my bank and been asked to reduce my overdraft by my bank due to 'adverse history' on my credit report! I ran a free credit check on 'Mycreditfile.com' and low and behold - British Gas have marked two negative attributes down due to a payment arrangement which I have been told will remain on my credit file for 6 years and that lenders will see as serious arrears! Had I known this, I would have borrowed the money from my parents. At no point did anybody at British Gas advise me of this. In fact they were happy to arrange my installments!

I am now in the messy and inconvenient process of trying to get British Gas to remove these negative attributes from my credit file. If anybody has any suggestions or similar stories I would be pleased to hear from you!

blue_pixie

British gas have two entries on my credit file on noddle one for over £300 for a property wher I paid using a prepayment meter, with the wrong dates. The other for almost £1000 for a flat where they never once read the meter and kept sending me the wrong bill, with this one last month they changed the default date from 2009 to 2010 last month even though I moved out in the summer of 2009! So whenever I email them theyemail back bit never address the issue!

spacebug

I recently had a problem with BG. It is sorted now but took a lot of effort to get to that point. I have up speaking to BG over the phone and sent an email to Sam Laidlaw (CEO of BG parent company Centrica). His address is sam.laidlaw@centrica.co.uk.

If you email him then your complaint will be heard by a different complaint team. It still took perseverance even after I was speaking to this team. I ended up complaining to the ICO (who police the Data Protection Act) about them abusing the credit reference data and asked BG for all of my data under a Data Protection Act SAR.

Good luck, stick with it. Even when it looks like all is lost keep on at them... Take it higher. Appeal.

Cheers

blue_pixie

Excuse the grammar and spelling! :-)

adviceappreciated_2

Hello,

I guess I ran into the same problem with BG as everybody else on here.
Quite innocently I was paying my bills online through their myaccount were you would put in your reading and it would generate the bill. What I did not realize, apparently it only gives you a bill on top of what you should pay according to the paper bill?
It does not make sense to me or the customer advice lady who I spoke to. In the meantime, they have put my late payment onto my credit file which is stopping my mortgage going through.

I am going to call them tomorrow, could you please advice what to say to them exactly?
Your advice to offer to pay the outstanding balance only when the
remove the late payment on my credit file sounds good, shall I check it was removed before paying or how to play it?
Many thanks for your advice!

sydneybean

thanks to all that have posted on here, In the last couple of days i have switched via uswitch to Sainsburys energy who use BG as their supplier, will be taking advantage of the 14 day cooling off period and cancelling the switch!

shelleyt85

Hi Never in Doubt please can you advise me how i go about getting british gas removed from my credit report. I moved into a property which they were already supplying never received any bills after numerous calls and i gave up now they are showing up on my credit file. HELP!!!

kris.maddox

Hi,

I have recently discovered that I have two very archaic(opened in 2012) BG accounts that are showing defaults registered in 2014. I have a number of issues with this.
1. I moved from the property in Dec 2013
2. The account actually fell in to arrears in January 2013. I discussed this with british gas who agreed to install a prepaid meter with a nominal weekly fee being taken, however, this was never installed. They called me again 3 months later... to discuss the debt only to agree again to install prepaid meter... which again didn't happen.

I never signed anything agreeing BG to share my data and repeatedly rtried to sort the arrears through arranging to install prepaid meter. I then left the property november 2013 and being honest, forgot about it. I have recently come to check my credit files and find that BG trading have defaults registered against me in 2014(far too late is my understanding on this as the account went in to arrears Jan 2013) I contacted BG to be told that the debt is showing as 'off' on their system and I couldn't clear the debt(I am awaiting response within 7 days from their credit accounts team or something similar)

My Issues are that I never agreed to BG sharing my data, the default date is massively erroneous and they wouldn;t let me pay when i contacted them.

What can i do about this?

Thanks in advance
Kris

fatbelly

fatbelly wrote: »

I think the moral of this is - if you are concerned about protecting (or improving) your credit record, don't use British Gas.

My advice from 6 years ago still seems relevant!

Kris - you're doing the right thing - wait to see what their response is.

salessweeper

Hi Never in Doubt, can you please help?
British Gas have added a default against my credit exper report which i do not feel is justified as i wasn't living in the property at the time they said (Feb 2010 / October 2012) I moved out in September 2011.
I have since paid this to a debt collection agency but I'm currently disputing this, can you help?

Currently my dispute is the following:
- Incorrect dates
- I have never verbally agreed to a contract with them
- I have never signed a contract with them
- I was not aware they shared my information
- The default was placed 8th February 2014 (i moved out September 201129 months later)
- I had another active British Gas agreement whilst they say this one was active for a different property
- I didn't receive any email's or letters saying it was going in to default.

Any help for my ongoing complaint would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you