Help - how do I get British Gas to respond?

saxmund

British gas owe me £26 - I was supposed to have got 1 month's free electricity a year after joining, but nothing was credited to my last bill. (They also owe me a bit through excessive monthly charges, but that's no problem as I'll get it back when I switch).

I have tried emailing them twice via the form on the house.co.uk website. No response. I tried phoning but gave up when the recorded message said the queue might be 20 minutes. I then wrote to them, assuming I would probably have to do that anyway in order to send them a copy of the letter confirming the "1 month free" deal. I think I did that on 19 March and have had no response. I'm going away after Easter so in practice will give them a bit longer to reply - but does anyone have a good idea to actually make them acknowledge and respond to my point? Is this something I can complain to the regulator about? As arguably they induced me to switch to them by lying about the deal available.

tripled

The letter probably got lost on the boat to India, along with your emails

If you are regsitered for online billing, house has a 24 hour contact line so it may be worth calling that late on when it's quiet.

e-mail response is supposed to be 48 hours, but they seem to get ignored, correspondence is 14-21 days so you may still be in with a chance of getting a reply.

Also are you sure you have been with them the full 12 months? It's not from the date you arrange the switch, it's from the date the supply goes live. It's also after a full 12 months, so if your latest bill was issued after 11 months and 27 days with them you wouldn't see it yet.

saxmund

I checked, they started supplying me on 20th Dec 2005 (or thereabouts) and the letter said it was due in my "first bill after 12 months" which was February. I checked the last paper bill I had and it said that letters would be replied to within 10 days so I will give them a little bit longer. I didn't realise there was a 24-hour phone line, so I'll try that and see if there's an email address I can email directly rather than through house.co.uk.

Their response rate to emails is erratic: sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, on one occasion I complained about an increased monthly payment; they didn't reply but they did rescind the increase, which I found out when checking my bill later on.

I'll give them one further chance to reply and then complain to energywatch.

One thing I'm still kicking myself about is that when they changed my direct debit without giving me notice, I didn't get round to instructing my bank to refund the payment. If everyone had done that it would have been chaos.:laugh:

saxmund

As it happens, today I got an email from BG, apologising for the time taken to reply and for having not received the automated credit. They have credited my account with £30. So I immediately went to moneysupermarket and switched to Powergen... the only thing holding me back was wanting to get my £26. It looks like I should be able to halve my bills - although some of that is due to being overcharged rather than the tariff being higher. I'm looking forward to the refund when I switch.