British Gas - wont let my sister swap provider

Corriefan75

Can anyone tell me if British Gas are in the wrong here?

My sister is getting £600+ quarterly gas bills and has tried to switch providers, but BG keep saying until she is out of 'debt' then they wont allow her to change. She pays her bills on time, and is never in serious debt. The customer service is always very impolite too. She has tried to contact other suppliers to go ahead with it anyway, but is told each time that BG have not allowed her to change because of what she owes.

Has anyone else had this problem? What's the solution?

Thanks

elsien

The solution is for her to pay British Gas what she owes them.
Not sure how she can pay her bills on time and "never be in serious debt" - if she's paying her bills she shouldn't be owing them anything anyway so there wouldn't be a problem.
If she's not in arrears, then she just needs to make sure she pays the final bill.

KimYeovil

Pay her debt and then leave. If she is never in 'serious' debt then this, surely, will be trivially easy.

jd87

Yep, she needs to cough up what she owes and then there won't be a problem.

Antispam

But she doesn't pay her whole bill in full, instead she has accrued a debt over many months

£600 is fairly large debt. Why would a supplier let you leave when she may well very ignore future debt, the utility company would then have to chase her for the debt incurring chargers if she didnt pay in full


As others have suggested pay the debt and she can leave failing that if she does pay by DD increase them to a manageable level but this will take longer for her to leave. If she pays by DD she may be back in problem at Winter as DD payments soon will be surplus to take the pain of winter billing

Corriefan75 wrote: »

Can anyone tell me if British Gas are in the wrong here?

My sister is getting £600+ quarterly gas bills and has tried to switch providers, but BG keep saying until she is out of 'debt' then they wont allow her to change. She pays her bills on time, and is never in serious debt. The customer service is always very impolite too. She has tried to contact other suppliers to go ahead with it anyway, but is told each time that BG have not allowed her to change because of what she owes.

Has anyone else had this problem? What's the solution?

Thanks

kjsmith7

Any balance owing for more than 28 days = overdue, so even if she's a couple of days late paying (or the payment only clears a little late) then they'll prohibit the switch. Pay the bill and move. Bear in mind though that the £600 is likely because of increased Winter consumption, so it's best to do a comparison on the last years kWh usage (just add it up off the last years bills).

It might be an idea to switch to monthly Direct Debit (either with a new supplier or with BG) to save a little bit of money from the bills and make it a lot easier to budget a set amount per month rather than having to pay £600 in one go

Corriefan75

kjsmith7 wrote: »

Any balance owing for more than 28 days = overdue, so even if she's a couple of days late paying (or the payment only clears a little late) then they'll prohibit the switch. Pay the bill and move. Bear in mind though that the £600 is likely because of increased Winter consumption, so it's best to do a comparison on the last years kWh usage (just add it up off the last years bills).

It might be an idea to switch to monthly Direct Debit (either with a new supplier or with BG) to save a little bit of money from the bills and make it a lot easier to budget a set amount per month rather than having to pay £600 in one go

Thanks to everyone for their responses, I will pass them on. This one sounds nearest the problem she seems to be facing, and going direct debit may be a better solution to solving the issue when it comes to switching provider.

Cheers all .