Problems with British Gas.

Cardew

arte wrote: »

Yes I was meaning 'not noticing' in the previous message, sorry.

I kind of understand their system and that they need to do in this way to correct my mistake. I find it unfair though that with a mistake like mine where I have actually overpaid the bill I get asked to pay even more money to make their system happy. At least they should have told me that the final bill would have been zero.
It would have been better then if I wouldn't have told them about my mistake and give a reading of 5 extra units as final bill.

Maybe I should write to their complaint department to try to explain the matter. What do you think?

Had you given them a reading of 0885(i.e. 5 more than your April reading as you suggest) the computer might not have picked up that anything was wrong and just billed you for 5 gas units at the tier 1 price.

However, as explained above, the correct charges have now been raised and you really have no grounds for complaint.

arte

OK it's a case of logic vs their computer system, I understand. I'll call them again and see what happen and if nothing can be done I'll pay the extra and I'll learn the lesson for the future.

Many thanks.

Cardew

t0rt0ise wrote: »

Yes I do. It's an annual charge worked out quarterly isn't it? So there's bound to be times when it doesn't work. What happens when people have very low use one quarter.. say go away for a long holiday to Australia? Would they then recalculate at the end of the year or change the calculation on the next quarter or what?

How does it work with the PPMs?

No it is an annual charge worked out daily! - as I explained in the post above with BG gas it is 7.34kWh charged at the expensive Tier 1 rate each day.

In the OP's case by inflating(albeit accidentally) his April meter reading it meant that he didn't pay for any Tier 1 units for 7 months. He should have paid for up to 1,560 Tier1 units in that period.

If we say Tier 1 units cost 8p/kWh and Tier 2 cost 3p/kWh he would have paid up to £78 less than he should have been billed.

Taking your case of someone going away to Australia, as long as the correct meter readings were given, there isn't a problem.

BG, or any other Utility company other than NPower, have no problem with minimal use in a billing period. Indeed some people switch off their gas completely for the 6 summer months for this reason.

However if BG were not to correct and rebill when wrong meter readings were given and subsequently discovered, it would be very easy for people to do deliberately what the OP did inadvertently. That would be fraud.