British Gas nightmare

Ninko

Hi there,

My mother-in-law recently moved home and as she didn't have her phone or internet setup yet (another story) I've been helping her sort out her accounts at my end.

Anyway, I signed her up to British Gas online. After a week or two she gets a letter saying they have 2 accounts registered at that address and can I contact them to sort it out. And so I rang British Gas up.

It seems the owner of the house before her hadn't took/closed their account with them (they had done this with pretty much every account they had). They said they had no record of us signing her up online... so they said we will have to sign her up over the phone which would 'cancel out' the previous owners account.

Another week later she gets a welcome letter from British Gas with her customer reference number. Problem is, there only appears to be one customer reference number, it's for both gas and electric. Is there only meant to be one as I have two customer reference numbers, one for gas, and one for electric.

Is this another British Gas mix-up?

Thanks


Ninko

chanz4

Its not a bg mixup, your mother in law didnt call to say just moved in. It will be a multi refence number they have given, but there will also be x2 account numbers

macman

She is in a deemed contract with BG (as the existing supplier) from day one. Once she is registered with them then for an account and has submitted opening readings then she can switch again if required. This should have been done as soon as she moved in.
If opening readings were not taken on day one (and the outgoing occupier took no closing readings), then inevitably confusion will arise, as it's impossible to agree an accurate transition reading.

Terrylw1

Customer reference numbers were always seperate because the industries were always that way before deregulation.

As suppliers upgraded systems in recent years and started to offer dual fuel discounts, they have sought to control them in more convenient ways its more convenient for a customer to have one account. They may or may not have two behind the scenes dependant on how the system has been upgraded.

None of this has changed the MPAN/MPRN since that is the reference for your meter points and is industry controlled.

chanz4

Bg are mainly on sap now, trust me it aint an easy system to use and was written for the stock control market

Terrylw1

Yeah, and some SAP systems were bought based on what was built for India and Australia.

Some of the SAP systems are not owned by suppliers so anything not built properly will be a big change, costing a lot and taking forever.

They can no longer use their own IT guys to correct/change things like this.

If the systems are being used by multiple suppliers, it will get into payable release versions, possibly consortium management, etc...disaster waiting to happen.

ihateyes

Ninko wrote: »

Hi there,

Problem is, there only appears to be one customer reference number, it's for both gas and electric. Is there only meant to be one as I have two customer reference numbers, one for gas, and one for electric.

Is this another British Gas mix-up?

Thanks


Ninko

NO mix up here.

BG are now using 1 customer number for new dual fuel customers.
also moving off sap quite soon as well.

Terrylw1

ihateyes wrote: »

NO mix up here.

BG are now using 1 customer number for new dual fuel customers.
also moving off sap quite soon as well.

Are they? What are they moving to?

I know some utility parties are moving away already due to inflexibility issues but wasn't aware suppliers had taken the jump. Yet (just the rumours )

littletommytucker

We're steering off topic here, but BG are not moving away from SAP. They are actually about to implement SAP crm to run alongside the current SAP R3 billing platform. This will be instead of the current Siebel CRM and SAP billing set up. In addition, they have already implemented there own "in house" software, named Agent Workbench. Workbench sits on top of SAP as an easy to use system for customer advisors.