BG business bill for a domestic property?

booey1

Hey

I've had an ongoing problem with BGB about gas and electric for over a year now and would really appreciate some help.

We moved house last year to a property that had been a business the year before that. We bought the domestic residential property and once we had a bill we put in a transfer to EDF fixed tariff. This took a couple of months as BGB disputed the meter reading. We used almost no gas or electric as we did not move in straight away.

As the usage was pretty much zero I assumed we'd have very little to pay.

Sadly BGB figured we had about £500 to pay for not using anything over about 2-3 months as they delayed the transfer by rejecting the meter readings.

A few months down the line after me confirming meter readings to everyone several times EDF confirm the correct starting reading and say it has been confirmed by BGB. I assume BGB will re-bill me.

No bills cone for several months until I get a final warning. I complain that I can't get a final warning if I have never had a correct bill. Several phone calls later they inform me the new balance of £250ish includes 4 months of someone else's bill before we bought the property! I explain the bill was from a previous occupant which seems do have been a business. I the asked if they had mistakenly left us on a business tariff because they did not take into account the change back to residential several months before we bought the house. She confirmed they had got the wrong dates and that they had not noted it was domestic. I asked her to rectify their mistake and change our property to donestic and the bill to domestic. She confirmed with no usage and there would be no charge as there was no standing charge on domestic.

Great, no bill or tiny bill. Everything sorted, will pay when arrives from BG domestic.

3 months later I get a collections letter from a debt collection company saying my credit has been affected and that they are now adding charges.

So I called BGB to complain, they 'forgot' to action all the things they said they would do. They also won't remove any marks from.my credit rating. They said they would look into it immediately and get back to me in 24 hours to resolve the complaint.

That was 2 weeks ago.

What do I do? All I was to do is pay of my very small usage bill, but a year on and they have done nothing! I don't know the balance so can't pay, they are trying to charge me for someone else's bill, they have me incorrectly on business rates and they are trying to damage my credit.

What can I do to get on on domestic billing and get a balance before this debt collection company applies for a CCJ?

Any help would be amazing this has been going on for far too long

pooch

booey1 wrote: »

Hey

I've had an ongoing problem with BGB about gas and electric for over a year now and would really appreciate some help.

We moved house last year to a property that had been a business the year before that. We bought the domestic residential property and once we had a bill we put in a transfer to EDF fixed tariff. This took a couple of months as BGB disputed the meter reading. We used almost no gas or electric as we did not move in straight away.

As the usage was pretty much zero I assumed we'd have very little to pay.

Sadly BGB figured we had about £500 to pay for not using anything over about 2-3 months as they delayed the transfer by rejecting the meter readings.

A few months down the line after me confirming meter readings to everyone several times EDF confirm the correct starting reading and say it has been confirmed by BGB. I assume BGB will re-bill me.

No bills cone for several months until I get a final warning. I complain that I can't get a final warning if I have never had a correct bill. Several phone calls later they inform me the new balance of £250ish includes 4 months of someone else's bill before we bought the property! I explain the bill was from a previous occupant which seems do have been a business. I the asked if they had mistakenly left us on a business tariff because they did not take into account the change back to residential several months before we bought the house. She confirmed they had got the wrong dates and that they had not noted it was domestic. I asked her to rectify their mistake and change our property to donestic and the bill to domestic. She confirmed with no usage and there would be no charge as there was no standing charge on domestic.

Great, no bill or tiny bill. Everything sorted, will pay when arrives from BG domestic.

3 months later I get a collections letter from a debt collection company saying my credit has been affected and that they are now adding charges.

So I called BGB to complain, they 'forgot' to action all the things they said they would do. They also won't remove any marks from.my credit rating. They said they would look into it immediately and get back to me in 24 hours to resolve the complaint.

That was 2 weeks ago.

What do I do? All I was to do is pay of my very small usage bill, but a year on and they have done nothing! I don't know the balance so can't pay, they are trying to charge me for someone else's bill, they have me incorrectly on business rates and they are trying to damage my credit.

What can I do to get on on domestic billing and get a balance before this debt collection company applies for a CCJ?

Any help would be amazing this has been going on for far too long

Have you raised an official complaint in line with their complaints procedure?

Terrylw1

Raise a complaint and include Standard Licence Condition (SLC) 22.2 which states they must supply you under a domestic contract.

Also read SLC6 about classification of premises.

See this link to Ofgem's site and use the supplier .PDF's.

http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Licensing/Work/Pages/licence-conditions-consolidated.aspx

Its worth noting that some suppliers who operate in domestic & business markets use separate trading entities so they perform a full switch to move you onto the correct portfolio. Your switch may have prevented this action however the SLC covers you so at worst the supplier just manually adjusts the bills as the entities are not your problem.

Raise a complaint. Be clear that if your credit has been affected by their incompetence, you expect it corrected. By raising a complaint, all follow up action should stop.

After 8 weeks or deadlock if sooner, you can escalate it to the ombudsman.

dogshome

Yes, raise a Complaint
But to ensure you get action, do this in WRITING and head the letter Complaint
as BIG and as BOLD as you have space for

chanz4

Terrylw1 wrote: »

Raise a complaint and include Standard Licence Condition (SLC) 22.2 which states they must supply you under a domestic contract.

Also read SLC6 about classification of premises.

See this link to Ofgem's site and use the supplier .PDF's.

http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Licensing/Work/Pages/licence-conditions-consolidated.aspx

Its worth noting that some suppliers who operate in domestic & business markets use separate trading entities so they perform a full switch to move you onto the correct portfolio. Your switch may have prevented this action however the SLC covers you so at worst the supplier just manually adjusts the bills as the entities are not your problem.

Raise a complaint. Be clear that if your credit has been affected by their incompetence, you expect it corrected. By raising a complaint, all follow up action should stop.

After 8 weeks or deadlock if sooner, you can escalate it to the ombudsman.

BG supply under 2 licenses, also the clasification for the site will be different on ecoes. They will get a high bill from bg business, as it will be out of contract rates.

As BG business also supply at the time, their is no obligation to supply on domestic rates and they dont normaly transfer between res and business

booey1

Thanks very much for all the help. I will send a complaint in writing, only complained on the phone so far.

I don't quite understand, are BG required to supply me with a domestic license? The below seems to suggest so?

" Licensee’s obligations 22.1 If the licensee supplies electricity to Domestic Premises, it must do so under a Domestic Supply Contract or a Deemed Contract. 22.2 Within a reasonable period of time after receiving a request from a Domestic Customer for a supply of electricity to Domestic Premises, the licensee must offer to enter into a Domestic Supply Contract with that customer. 22.3 If the Domestic Customer accepts the terms of the Domestic Supply Contract offered to him under paragraph 22.2, the licensee must supply electricity in accordance with that contract. "

Thanks again, looking forward to getting this sorted

chanz4

booey1 wrote: »

Thanks very much for all the help. I will send a complaint in writing, only complained on the phone so far.

I don't quite understand, are BG required to supply me with a domestic license? The below seems to suggest so?

" Licensee’s obligations 22.1 If the licensee supplies electricity to Domestic Premises, it must do so under a Domestic Supply Contract or a Deemed Contract. 22.2 Within a reasonable period of time after receiving a request from a Domestic Customer for a supply of electricity to Domestic Premises, the licensee must offer to enter into a Domestic Supply Contract with that customer. 22.3 If the Domestic Customer accepts the terms of the Domestic Supply Contract offered to him under paragraph 22.2, the licensee must supply electricity in accordance with that contract. "

Thanks again, looking forward to getting this sorted

The thing that you are missing is that if its registered as 02 on ecoes it would be registered as a business supply and they cant do residential until its 01

Terrylw1

chanz4 wrote: »

BG supply under 2 licenses, also the clasification for the site will be different on ecoes. They will get a high bill from bg business, as it will be out of contract rates.

As BG business also supply at the time, their is no obligation to supply on domestic rates and they dont normaly transfer between res and business

The SLC specifically states they must bill on domestic contracts, not business.

No supplier can ignore the correct policy of taxation either so if a domestic used higher than de minimus, they can't apply higher rate tax just because the site used to be business.

A Deemed business contract rate doesn't apply either as the SLC's classify the type of premise hence the Deemed contract follows that.

ECOES will be incorrect but that can be updated with a backdated effective from settlement date.

Terrylw1

chanz4 wrote: »

The thing that you are missing is that if its registered as 02 on ecoes it would be registered as a business supply and they cant do residential until its 01

01 & 02 are domestic, 03 & 04 are the non maximum demand business versions and 5+ are the maximum demand business ones.

This can easily be updated with a backdated date to the occupation date (providing there is no later update in the way which may then mean a cut off process of update is applied if the supplier doesn't want to pay for retrospective amendments).

Updating like this is normally done within a matter of days, anything over 5 working days would be an unusually long period of rejection of this process. The supplier, may spend less than 10 mins making this update at worst...its simple.

Terrylw1

booey1 wrote: »

Thanks very much for all the help. I will send a complaint in writing, only complained on the phone so far.

I don't quite understand, are BG required to supply me with a domestic license? The below seems to suggest so?

" Licensee’s obligations 22.1 If the licensee supplies electricity to Domestic Premises, it must do so under a Domestic Supply Contract or a Deemed Contract. 22.2 Within a reasonable period of time after receiving a request from a Domestic Customer for a supply of electricity to Domestic Premises, the licensee must offer to enter into a Domestic Supply Contract with that customer. 22.3 If the Domestic Customer accepts the terms of the Domestic Supply Contract offered to him under paragraph 22.2, the licensee must supply electricity in accordance with that contract. "

Thanks again, looking forward to getting this sorted

Yes, that's correct.

Look at 6.3 & 6.4 which define your property as domestic now and also define your charges are domestic.

chanz4

They will still need to change supplier though even if its internal BG , as their systems wont have the tariff within it on business at res rates.