British Gas farce

MrsTee_2

Last August we moved house (and luckily utility supplier), in the old house we had pre payment meters for both gas and electricity so therefore were never in debt (twas impossible). I phoned up BG and told them we were moving and gave them the final readings.

Yesterday I had an electricity bill for £500 electricity useage since we moved out, with a nice little note saying that as someone else has informed them that they've moved into the property they've closed our account.

Today I had one for £400 for gas!!

Talk about taking the p !!

I phoned yesterday, spoke to a nice man who said that somehow our account had been accidentally reopened straight after being closed. I accepted this as coincidence but when today's bill arrived I was rather suspicious. Had an awful time on the phone to them today, spoke to 4 different people before some half soaked sounding 'youf' tells me he'll investigate it and I should hear something in 3 mths!! I told him this wasn't acceptable as I wanted to know how it had happened and I wanted the bills cancelled.

He went away again then came back muttering something about lost meter readings, told me it was sorted and I'd hear within 3 mths.

I came off the phone and sent an email to them straight away.
It amazes me more that I could apparently have used almost £1000 worth of fuel without paying in advance on prepayment meters.

Cardew

MrsTee wrote:

Last August we moved house (and luckily utility supplier), in the old house we had pre payment meters for both gas and electricity so therefore were never in debt (twas impossible).

I am afraid that your assumption that it "twas impossible" and you couldn't be in debt is incorrect.

If you read through loads of posts in this forum you will see that for every Utility company(not just BG) it is not only possible to be in debt with pre-pay meters, but very probable that you would be in debt using pre-payment meters.

You sign a contract for BG(or any other company) to supply you with gas/electricity at the pre-payment tariff rate. If the tariff increases(as it has frequently in recent times) you must pay that tariff.
Now it is normally the case that they don't get around to changing the settings to apply the new tariff on the pre-payment meters until well after the effective date of the tariff increase. So in that case you are not paying the full price for your gas/electricity and you build up a deficit.

When they do change the settings on your meter they normally increase it to above the new tariff to recover your deficit.

So as you will see if you look on this forum it is very possible that when you left the house you did owe money.