British gas or EDF,help me decide Please.

scotty1875

Beware EDF, Cooking-Mama!

I found EDF's customer service to be abysmal.

I arranged the transfer of my elderly mum's supplies from British Gas Scotland / Scottish Power to EDF dual fuel earlier this year.

Neither supply was transferred successfully after 3 months. EDF incorrectly insisted they were the new gas supplier and they started taking direct debit payments so my mum was effectively paying twice for her gas as she was still being billed by British Gas Scotland. If I didn't assist with her bill management she would never have noticed this.

The electricity transfer wasn't progressed by EDF at all.

I was considering switching to EDF from EON when my own discounted rate expired recently - but I've decided to stay and pay a bit more with EON as I have found their customer service to be faultless.


The call centre staff were hopeless in sorting the transfers out. Every call took 45 mins - 1 hour to get through to an adviser. They also broke promises to call back with an update / solution. Emails weren't replied to within their own response times either.

I ended up cancelling the contract with EDF and obtained a refund.

My mum would rather pay extra on the high rates associated with the old fashioned quarterly paper billing system to maintain the levels of customer service from her current suppliers than pursue the cheaper monthly direct debit deal with EDF or any other suppliers now - which is a sad reflection EDF.

MillicentBystander

EDF are cheap for a reason would be my assessment, based on painful personal experience I might add. Total shambles of a company and i can't believe OFGEM (anyone remember them?) haven't got involved.

scotty1875

MillicentBystander wrote: »

EDF are cheap for a reason would be my assessment, based on painful personal experience I might add. Total shambles of a company and i can't believe OFGEM (anyone remember them?) haven't got involved.

I second that Millicent

gould300

When I switched to EDF (from Atlantic) a year ago they made a complete mess between them. I've just switched from EDF to BG and once again it's a mess - EDF ignored the estimated gas reading and over-charged on my final bill. BG's system can't do simple sanity checking and it thinks I've used 1.1 *million* kWh of gas in just over a month (because my latest reading is less than the one that EDF somehow sent back to them and their calculations wrap back around somehow). They also 'forgot' to bill me for any gas through my direct debit and initially only took the money for electricity.

If you have to pick one of them then at least BG answer the phone in a reasonable amount of time (or have done so far) whereas when I last spoke to EDF I was on hold for 45 minutes.

Chances are whoever you pick as a supplier will be much of a muchness. I always though BG were terrible but putting my actual consumption figures into uswitch.com showed them to be cheapest. Then I switched and now they've raised prices by 18%. Grrr!

HalloweenJack

and i have had nothing but joy with EDF - phone when its `offpeak` and the wait times are low , very helpful ppl on the hpone and bills based on readings....

cooking-mama

Thanks for the warnings guys...Ive actualy had to phone EDF this morning already as my activation Email had my name spelt wrong so I couldnt activate my online account,and again i was pleasantly surprised by how quickly they answered the phone,turned out id phoned the wrong number,but the 2nd(still freephone)number was answered after aprox 10ms,there was a message apologising for delay and explaining they have recruited 700 extra staff to deal with telephone and internet probs,so fingers crossed.....in the meantime,at a saving of over £200 a year,its a risk i feel i have to take...wish me luck.