Help! British Gas gave me a Dummy MPRN!?!

AliA76

In the process of trying to change from British Gas to EDF after living in property for 8 yrs (previous owner also with British Gas) after over a month with no luck EDF came back and said we did not have an MPRN but just a 'dummy' one and we couldn't switch until British Gas issued us with one. Very helpful bloke at British Gas explained that he couldn't give me an answer straight away as to how long would take and would need to get a specialist team to look into it as never seen anything like it!
Rang back today to say I would have a 'case worker' for it, who would ring us within the next 5 days to introduce themselves and, as we now know it is a dummy number there will probably be a substantial credit to the account.
All seems very strange when I had not even uttered the word 'complaint' and he was very keen to make sure that he told me where to look at their complaints procedure and offered to send me out a copy which I accepted in bemusement.
Am I missing something? How important is this MPRN? and should I expect a small credit followed by a large bill from some company I didn't know I was with or should I not have been paying British Gas for the last 8 years???!

AppleMonkey

AliA76 wrote: »

All seems very strange when I had not even uttered the word 'complaint' and he was very keen to make sure that he told me where to look at their complaints procedure and offered to send me out a copy which I accepted in bemusement.
Am I missing something? How important is this MPRN? and should I expect a small credit followed by a large bill from some company I didn't know I was with or should I not have been paying British Gas for the last 8 years???!

Maybe they are being pro-active and trying to help you before getting to a complaint - And they are advising of you of the procedures should you wish to make one.

MPRN is important as its a unique identifier for the gas supply going to your property.

As for what to expect? if you have been paying the bills and the readings on your meter are correct there probably won't be a huge credit / bill. So don't expect the earth - However if your bills have been estimated for the last 8 years you might be in for a surprise.

AliA76

Thanks for the response, settled my mind a bit this morning.
But then this afternoon got phone call from BG saying that as was never on National Grid and because of this BG had never been invoiced by National Grid for the gas, they should not have been charging me and therefore thay need to refund all my payments going back to 2004!!! Asked if should expect a large bill from somewhere else and they said definitely not, but at the same time thay can't issue an MPRN as I'm not staying with them and I'll need to get EDF to issue me one. Asked them to leave it with me and think I had better check with OFCOM in morning-8 yrs free gas seems too good to be true!

t0rt0ise

I'd let them pay it back to you, put it in a bank account safe somewhere and wait and see what happens. Good for you. Enjoy the little windfall.

AppleMonkey

AliA76 wrote: »

Thanks for the response, settled my mind a bit this morning.
But then this afternoon got phone call from BG saying that as was never on National Grid and because of this BG had never been invoiced by National Grid for the gas, they should not have been charging me and therefore thay need to refund all my payments going back to 2004!!! Asked if should expect a large bill from somewhere else and they said definitely not, but at the same time thay can't issue an MPRN as I'm not staying with them and I'll need to get EDF to issue me one. Asked them to leave it with me and think I had better check with OFCOM in morning-8 yrs free gas seems too good to be true!

Well they are sorting of right and sort of wrong - National Grid don't sell gas as such they just maintain the pipeline. Also NG are not the only provider of this service and it tends to be newer build houses that don't use NGs pipelines that cause a bit of commotion.

You shouldn't expect a huge bill though as again as I said earlier if you have been paying for the usage on your meter (i.e. all your readings have been correct over the years etc) then it will roughly be the same - The only thing you may be able to claim is back billing rules etc meaning you may only need to pay the last x amount of years meaning you get a small windfall.

As someone else has said keep the money in a savings account and wait for the new supplier's bills and take it from there