British gas help

ttwlcd

I have been trying to get into my account since yesterday but unfortunately I can't, it keeps telling me my account is offline at the moment. Just hope they are not going to spring another bill on me they have admitted it is their fault. That's why they are now paying £1400 of the account

I'm giving them to Monday then I will ring them again so I can set up dd before they send the debt collectors round

chanz4

They wont be paying it, just writting it off.

ttwlcd

lol yea I know sorry I was being sarcastic

Terrylw1

Ah, I'm with you.

So in all cases from your account start date, the 1st digit was removed.

Well, this is very poor on their part.

Every time your or the meter readers readings were sent go your supplier, this would have failed and someone would have had to look at why. Those people have been removing the 1st digit in error and its very stupid. Usually if this goes wrong they either remove the 1st zero or the last digit.

What they should have done us investigate it properly which would involve calls to their agents, checks in their own systems to see if they have just not set the meter up correctly, calls to you and maybe even sending an engineer out to check it.

It sounds to me like they have not done any of this until recently and now they are back billing you for their mistakes.

For a start, you should not accept anything billed prior to the last 12 months. The billing code would cover this and providing you have not hindered or concealed anything, they shouldn't bill back any further. However, these companies do try it on to see if you are informed enough to make them comply with their own codes of practice!

In terms of actual consumption, you will just get rebilled for the actual meter consumption. So, its only for what you have used.

However, the should give you the option of a payment plan, usually over 12 months but can be longer, if you need it.

Its a joke that they haven't investigated this.

Raise a complaint and ask them how many times they had a reading which matches your meters number of digits, how many times these errored to somebody, what they did and how many times their staff ignored what they should do and simply whipped a digit off!

If you could post some readings though it would help.

By taking the first digit off though, its going to cause you to grossly underbill if you never exceeded a 3 digit reading. It would look like your meter was "clocking" constantly throughout the year and they would know that was wrong.

A meter can have a reading up to 9 digits in length but the standard is 5 or 6. I know some companies have always used meter operators who use 5 digit meters and when contracting others that use 6 digit meters, they have failed to respond to the change and kept them at 5 until investigation proved a change was required. When your meter is changed or you switch, the supplier is always told how many digits the meter takes up to, so unless they were informed wrong by their meter operator agent, the blame is on the supplier. Even if the meter operator got is wrong, your readings would still trigger an investigation.

ttwlcd

I have raised a complaint I sent a letter recorded delivery to the complaints department, which they rang me Tuesday with the full bill saying that they would take £1400 off for a good will but I'm guessing its not that but they can only go back 12 months. They even have it on record that last year Feb 24 bg rang me up to query the reading but they informed me I was reading the meter wrong and I being stupid thought they knew what they were doing, I have thought about this since last Thursday first I was shocked, angry and devastated about the bill about I still have a debt but know I'm beginning to look at it a bit different yes I still have a debt to pay but have got away with £1400 worth of free electric just wished I knew this at the start then I would have used my tumble dryer more and used electric fires then I could have saved on my gas. Thanks for letting me moan on here because it was something I couldn't do at home to my husband because as I have said he is a I'll man and I'm sure this would have made him worse.
thank terrylw1 for understanding the situation correction