British gas broke into my home!!

prowla

I would contact the police regardless; they may not actually do anything, but the crime reference number may be useful at least.

It doesn't make a particular difference whether they had authority to go into somebody else's place.

macman

It's not a criminal offence if the warrant was correctly executed. We don't know what address was actually on the warrant-it may be that the warrant itself was incorrectly addressed.
Out of interest, why are the doors unnumbered? It doesn't excuse their guesswork, but it would make things easier.

Terrylw1

macman wrote: »

It's not a criminal offence if the warrant was correctly executed. We don't know what address was actually on the warrant-it may be that the warrant itself was incorrectly addressed.
Out of interest, why are the doors unnumbered? It doesn't excuse their guesswork, but it would make things easier.

That's a very good point as it will expose who is at fault. It could be the warrant and the warrant officer has correctly done this and seen the address/meter number match expectations.

If the warrant is for the other address though, massive incompetence by the warrant officer as he could easily have check the meter number first.

Do you get your bills addressed correctly showing your meter number with the readings being inline? If so, it won't be any address mismatch issue.

I agree with all that's been said. I think Jalexa's "trap" would be useful in determining Macman's point but I agree with Cardew that you should make this as publicly embarrassing for them as possible.

The highest level of complaint is easily one that comes via a press office in the supplier. My experience of these (done some in the past) is that they want everything sorted extremely quickly to prevent the story being published and due to this they often throw money at customers to protect their brand. These are higher than anything to a director level IMO.

dacouch

It's British Gas, they do not have a reputation to protect

[Deleted User]

callmeted wrote: »

In answer to this:
No warrant left
The doors, once inside the flat are not marked 217, 217a and 217b, or indeed at all.

I would have thought common-sense would dictate that if there is any unsurity, then they can't just guess... but there you go

common sense would also get you or your landlord to spend two minutes to label the flat doors correctly. that will be the main reason why the flat (217b) had not been accessed in the first place. I can tell you that any meter readers will quickly give up if its one of three flats they are trying to get into, and they dont know which one it is. Even so , it was plain to see by the people who finally entered your flat that they had got in the wrong flat,meter serial number would not have matched. I think you would expect something in the order of £100 pounds compensation at least for your bad experience. meantime, even its just in biro, mark your flat door

spiro

I think your problem stems from the numbering and lack of number on a door. If number had been divided into 3 flats I would expect them to be A, B and C so they have wrongly taken 1st floor to be B. As no one was in to correct them then it is probably a genuine mistake.

macman

Not difficult to number your own door-how does the postie cope?

jalexa

Does anybody have an informed answer regarding whether a copy of the warrant should have been left?

jalexa

jalexa wrote: »

Does anybody have an informed answer regarding whether a copy of the warrant should have been left?

Bumping. Are there really no experts on subjects other than numbering doors?

An interesting blog...

http://thejusticeofthepeace.blog.co.uk/2010/03/23/warrants-of-entry-and-applications-to-disconnect-utility-supply-8231890/

callmeted

To all saying "why didn't you have the number on your door?" - in theory, the only people that can enter the house that contain the flats know which door pertains to which flat.

Obviously hindsight dictates that the doors should be numbered (which we will do), but who thinks that anyone is going to enter the house to do this?