Ongoing battle with British Gas - any advice appreciated!

jaggedthistle

Hi everyone,

My fiance and I switched to British Gas in June last year, and our first direct debit was taken at the end of July - we hadn't actually received a bill but just assumed it was lost in the post or something. However, we didn't received a bill in August either and the first we knew was when £250 was taken out on 10th Sept. I called them that same day to question it as we hadn't received a bill and I thought £250 was an awful lot for one month's gas when there's only 2 of us in the house and it was the middle of summer. The lady I spoke to admitted they'd muffed the meter reading and our bill should only have been £50, so she refunded us the £200 and said that everything was sorted. I came off the phone quite happy, considering, as she was extremely helpful and apologetic.

You can imagine my surprise to then find out 2 weeks later, they had taken the £250 again!! I again called them and they admitted it must have been a glitch in the system as our account was showing completely up to date, so again the money was refunded into our account.

They then tried to take the £250 again at the start of October alongside another bill of £43 (both came out on the same day), however it was just before pay day so there was enough money to pay the £43 direct debit but no money to pay the £250 direct debit and we were charged by our bank for the direct debit bouncing. I called them again and no-one would accept responsibility for my call so after being passed from pillar to post for 45 minutes I finally got to speak to someone who said that they couldn't understand why this amount was being taken. He even sent me a text message from British Gas showing that our account was completely up to date and we were not owing £250.

This has been ongoing every two weeks since and every time I call I just keep being told that they can't understand why this is happening. As a result of the direct debits being rejected, our bank has cut our overdraft to £50 and we are being charged every time British Gas don't receive their payment of £250.

When I called at the start of December for the umpteenth time, they said that if we switched to the fixed monthly direct debit it would stop this from happening until they could fix the problem, so grudgingly I did.

Again, this has proven to be rubbish as they were successful in taking the £250 again in December, just before Christmas. My fiance called them to complain and to get our money back. The person he spoke to said that there was a fault in the system and it would take 4-6 weeks to get the money back to us. My fiance argued this as being unacceptable, but came up against a brick wall. As a result of this, we have not been able to meet half of our direct debit payments this month and are receiving letters from the bank advising of a number of charges we are going to receive because there has not been enough money in our account.

The bit that really gets me is that when I complained initially about the £250, she only refunded me £200 so they've already received £50 but still keep trying to take £250!!!

I'm a full time mature student and my fiance is not on a fantastic wage, so this £250 is a huge deal for us. Does anyone have any advice they can offer to try and get our money back faster as we still haven't received it? :(

Premier_2

How have you agreed to pay? Monthly by DD or quarterly on receipt of bill by DD?


Either way, you are required to be given advance notice of any collection. That will specify the amount and the date(s). e,g, for a quarterly bill it will state the full amount and the date it will be collected. For monthly payments, they can issue one advance notice for say £50 to be collected on say 16th day of every month.

You say you didn't get the first bill; you thought it was lost in the post or something.
You know you really should have asked the supplier to send a duplicate. If they had already sent one, then you should have reported the lost post to your Royal mail office and perhaps also informed the police. It's amazing how much post appears to go missing according to MSE posters.

Anyway, no advance notice is a good enough reason to reclaim a DD payment under the terms of the DD guarantee.
Payments should not be refunded by the originator (BG in this instance) but you should claim from your bank (and the bank will later claim from the originator) This is important and a term of the DD scheme. All claims are logged and too many claims will be investigated and may result in an originator being suspended from using the DD scheme.

You see, you say the same thing happened again, and again, another £250 taken without agreement, again a claim should have been made to your bank.

If you'd have done the correct thing, (a) I'm sure BG wouldn't have continued to do this and (b) if they had they would have their own sponsoring bank to answer to.

Why am I not surprised you switching tariff did not resolve the issue? But the CS member was probably pleased. An extra bonus in her christmas pay and a customer now signed up to a fixed term (or pay an early exit fee)

Claim via your bank under the DD guarantee. The bank is obliged to refund you immediately. Simples :cool:

Chances are that if you repeatedly claim under the DD guarantee against a certian DDI, your bank will cancel the DDI anyway (if you haven't already done so)

jaggedthistle

We had agreed to pay by monthly variable direct debit.

I did receive a duplicate bill from BG - when I called them the second time they asked if I wanted to switch to paperless billing so that I would receive bills via email. I did this and can now view all of my bills online.

The reason I didn't apply to my bank to have the money refunded was because BG said that they were refunding the money. The second time I called I was told that it would take 5-7 working days to refund the money and the only other thing I could do would be to contact my bank to see if they could return the money quicker. When I called the bank, they said that it would take just as long and I was just as well to leave it to BG to refund the money.

Thank you for your advice. I will contact the bank first thing in the morning.

dogshome

Hi jaggedthistle - Though your post is not explicit, it appears that you opted for monthly D/Debit payments to the value of your months consumption, but what BG are taking are fixed monthly D/Debit payments of £250, which they think are equal to 1/12th of your annual bill, which they guess will be in the region of £3,000 a year

Obviously someone mis-keyed thier wonderful computer system, and it will keep on taking £250 till
someone changes it
DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME with phone calls & Emails to the Customer Sevice Desk as this problem is outside thier remit and you must take it to a higher level

WRITE a letter headed Compliant, listing succinctly the problems you are having, and that you hold them responsible for the Bank charges you have incurred, and that you also require an open
letter to your bank to restore your credit record, which explains that they have removed £XX from your bank account in error

grahamc2003

If the payments were taken by direct debit, then why didn't you simply ring your bank and ask them to reverse the payments since they were requested in error?. afaiui, the banks should do that without penalising you.

Edit - oopse, posted before reading the whole thread where you've covered this.

Premier_2

jaggedthistle wrote: »

...The reason I didn't apply to my bank to have the money refunded was because BG said that they were refunding the money. ...

But that is wrong and a clear breach of the rules of the DD scheme.
They should refer to terms 11.3 & 11.8 of the originator's guide and rules to the direct debit scheme.

jaggedthistle wrote: »

The second time I called I was told that it would take 5-7 working days to refund the money and the only other thing I could do would be to contact my bank to see if they could return the money quicker. When I called the bank, they said that it would take just as long and I was just as well to leave it to BG to refund the money.

Then the bank assistent was wrong too
(not unusual where the rules of the DD scheme are concerned)

The bank must make "a full and immediate repayment" of a DD under the rules of the DD guarantee.
You should have been provided with a copy when you agreed to pay by DD, but you can find loads of examples on the web.