Is British Gas stealing your money.

norwayhouse

July 06 we sold our flat, read the meter and notified British Gas. Despite the fact that BG were given an actual reading they 3 months later sent a final bill with an estimated reading, a refund of £50. Our expected refund was £500+ so we carefully looked at the bill, only to realise that the fact it was estemated was written is small print while FINAL BILL was fat and clear. This, I am sure a lot of customers will not spot and accept a reduced refund. We contacted BG by phone and letter, but till today have received no refund, not even the £ 50 they promised in October. We did also contact the watchdog and filed a complaint with them, but they are as useless as any other Governmental office, they provide you with a ref. no. and that is an end to what powers they have, ( more like just employing people for the sake of keeping them in a job). Keep away from British Gas, they have a procedure in their Service Centre that if a customer is due a refund it does NOT get automatically prosessed but go to a manual back office, to rest on somebody's desk until that person leaves and his/her desk is clered and your case binned. My advice is stay clear of British Gas!

gwapenut

This is one of several tactics BG use to hold on to more money than they are entitled to.

Other tricks are billing - and accepting payment - for the same gas twice at the same property and then being obstructive when it comes to making refunds or account amalgamations.

Never again.

Spark

When BG changed my prepayment electricity meter for a credit meter, there was still £34 in it. The engineer told me that BG will give me back the money.
My last bill with them, nine months later and before I moved to another supplier, was £125, but they made me pay £151, I called them and enquire as why I had to pay an extra £26, and where were my £34, and I was told point blank that they will investigate and that the investigation will take 6 months.
They had 9 months already to investigate about the £34, I just move supplier straight after that, before loosing the will to live.
I think they are kind of stringing people along to see if they will give up, whether it's because of incompetence or any other reasons, and personally I think I paid a very low price to escape BG hell.

tripled

The credit on your meter is irrelevant. Each payment you make goes onto your BG account. So the payment you made which put the meter in credit would have been on there and deducted from your first bill - ask for a statement.

tomstickland

Whatever happened to "britishgasworker"?

Spark

After I changed my meter, I had two bills and no mention was made about any £34 reduction. They definitively pocket it.
I do not want to have anything to do with them anyway, I'd rather shoot myself in the head.

newlife_starts_now

IF they are still not returning your money, go to Energywatch.

They will investigte it and are good at getting back to you.

tripled

Spark - as I said above, £34 wouldn't show on your bill unless you made a payment of £34 to British Gas :wall:

Paul_Varjak

I have a credit meter but BG think I have prepayment meter, so I cannot persuade them to take payment by the direct debit that was set up!

tripled

It is their front line support team who need to sort it out for you Paul - unfortunately that is the most unreliable department in British Gas, and that really is saying something. They are supposed to ring you within 7 days of the staff logging your problem, but in reality it just doesn't happen. If you haven't already, you'll need to get in touch with energywatch to sort it out.

If you are worried about getting into debt, you should be able to make payments by debit card to them for the amount your dd would be every month until it is sorted.

CheeseOnToast

I am confused with my FIRST bill from BG, as it shows my FIRST reading as an estimated one how in the hell can that ever work?