British Gas I'm losing the will to live !

Somerset · 16 January 2007 at 11:40PM

They are unbelievable, it's a wonder they have any customers left. This is about changing a prepayment to a normal credit meter. Nov 06 bought a flat with a prepayment meter. It took B Gas 4 goes to successfully get an engineer out to reset it as I'm a new account. I want a normal meter but had to jump through the hoop of waiting 1 month and putting money on the key 3 times. So in Dec 06 I requested the meter change, went through the credit check ( although I'm an existing customer from a different address ) got the change date, made sure the meter company would ring me when they arrived ( because the intercom system in the flat doesn't work ) and waited in from 12pm to 6pm - nothing. The engineer had come and gone because B Gas had given him the wrong telephone number. Rang them .... very sorry ..... don't know how we did that .... have £20 compo .... here's your new visit date. I must have asked the guy 6 times ' are you sure you've put down they must call and triple checked the number '. Today, like a mug, there I am again waiting ... and waiting .... At 6pm I ring Onstream ( the B Gas meter people ). Girl says ' you've been cancelled and rescheduled for 20th Feb ... I don't know why ' Me ' why didn't you ring me to let me know ' Her ' we don't have a number for you ' Then to add salt into the wound the girl tells me the 'job' is for/in the previous owner's name - they haven't got my details at all.

Rang B Gas tonight ... sorry ... don't understand how ... they have my info ... oh and the previous £20 compo they agreed is 'missing' from my notes. We'll call you back tomorrow madam ............

Rant over ! Serious questions - does anyone have any 'get it sorted numbers' to ring B Gas on ? ( You can tell how confident I am about that call back ). Also I thought I'd transfer from B Gas after I'd got a normal meter, I thought it would be less complicated. But I'm losing the will to live - should I just transfer with the prepayment meter and do the switch with the new supplier ?

Thanks for listening.:T

Astaroth · 17 January 2007 at 11:34AM

It is always easier to switch at the point of taking over the property than at a later date - gas less so than electricity but still.

One of the main problems of privatisation was that the existing companies had to be broken into 3 - generation, distribution and supply. The legal requirement was that whilst one Group could still own all 3 aspects they had to be operated separately to allow new companies in on the supply aspect to have a fighting chance against the original regional supplier with the idea that competition would be in the consumers best interests.

The downside of this is that you get silly situations where you are dealing with the same brand throughout but actually having to deal with 2 different companies and the usual problems with getting 2 companies to talk to each other.

When I used to work for a gas/ elec supplier we used to get people phoning up to ask if we supplied their property or not, anywhere in the country we could see if we did or didnt but only in our historic regions could we see who did supply them if it wasnt us (IT were working on removing that from our systems) but irrespective of that all we legally could say was that it wasnt us.

Somerset · 17 January 2007 at 10:59PM

Astaroth wrote:

One of the main problems of privatisation was that the existing companies had to be broken into 3 - generation, distribution and supply. The legal requirement was that whilst one Group could still own all 3 aspects they had to be operated separately to allow new companies in on the supply aspect to have a fighting chance against the original regional supplier with the idea that competition would be in the consumers best interests.

Fine - but the single B Gas dept that deals with prepay meter's, who are the only ppl I am allowed to speak to, have lost notes right left and centre, failed to stick to their 24 hour call back. At 5pm I called them again, there was no note of a call back. The girl said she would 'definately' request one, timeframe within 4 hours ..... the 4 hours ran out at 9pm and nothing. This is nothing to do with different elements of the company ... it's the same section that just isn't functioning ... or is that the point ? customer's are just a pain in the !!!! who expect them to provide the service they promise and make telephone calls when they say they will ?