British Gas (again)

SimonBrad

I've been through as many threads as I could before things got too blurry before I post this so no flaming please.

I've been with BG for a few years on dual fuel and changed from a prepayment electricity meter to a standard one at the start of 2005. I'd also been paying roughly the same amount per month for my electricity (£30) regardless of pre-paid or monthly DD.

Last week I received a 'payment review' from BG saying that my monthly amount was going up by £58 to £88 per month. All my previous statements said that I was either incredit or just a few pounds in debit and it usually sorted itself out over 12 months.

I finally managed to register at their website for paperless billing and it gave me access to my average electricity use. When I checked this I noticed that my average daily consumption was between 10.5 to 16 units per day, but in September 2006 it rose to 221 units per day over a 12 day period.

When I queried them over this they were actually quite helpful and suggested either a power surge (doubtful) or a meter problem and asked me to record the readings over a 7 day period and get back to them.

I did this today and got a totally different person who dismissed the problem because they had been undercharging me for over 2 years and it had finally caught up. It seems that every single bill over that period was estimated (according to them) and yet I seem to recall they visited several times to read the meters and now all of a sudden I have an arrears of £470+ after a visit in September by a meter reader.

My question is this: Do British Gas have the right to burden me with this large bill knowing full well that they have taken over six months to inform me of a payment change when the amount would not have been anything like it is if they had done so sooner? Also, they have obviously recalculated the bill to be repaid over several months but do I have to (by law) use their figures, or can I extend the repayment time over more years to reduce the cost because of their failure to inform me of an underpayment problem sooner than they actually did?

I've emailed Energywatch about this and they have asked me to fill in an online complaints form so they can proceed with their doings.

Ta.

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

Firstly you should be aware that BG have changed all accounts onto their new computer system(all 16 million of them) and there are huge teething problems to be sorted out.

The first thing is that the billing history has been wiped out and previous consumption figures can be a nonsense. On one of my accounts it shows I had used 1,124,252.00kWh which is a daily total of 12,775.59kWh for 88 days! Which makes your 221 per day positively frugal!!

If you had remained paying £30 a month from the start of 2005 it is very probable you do owe a lot of money as you must be aware there were several large price increases in the 2+ years since then.

The crux of the matter is were your previous bills estimated or not. It is pertinent to point out that the computer can disregard meter readings that it ‘thinks’ are suspect.
If your billing history is not available on-line(and I doubt it is) you are entitled to ask for the readings. However you must have grounds for challenging those readings as you have some responsibility to have checked your own bills previously.

Assuming that your debit balance is genuine, you are liable for that amount. There are some better qualified and knowledgeable BG employees (like Tripled) who hopefully will comment on pay back times. However plenty of people appear to have got a reduction of 10%-20% in their outstanding balance where BG have some culpability and also extending pay back time for up to 2 years(if the debt has built up over that time) is not unusual.

However your original £30 a month is probably at least £45 now, so with payments of £88 it is going to take you over a year to pay back the £470 you owe.

tripled

I'm afraid the person you got through to today is probably right. Unless your meter was read twice in 12 days (which is highly doubtful), then the consumption would be a quirk in the system.

I would recommend asking a copy of your last two years of statements if you haven't kept your own so you can verify the information you have been given. Use the number 0845 600 0055 as this *should* direct you to an agent trained on the old billing system (new starters haven't been trained on it for nearly a year now so won't be able to go back far on your account). You will not be charged for this.

As for repaying the balance, BG will only offer one year as standard. However, energywatch states you should be allowed to repay a debt over the time it has accrued if the company is at fault and shouldn't be made to pay more than you can afford. In pratice BG will give a maximum of 2 years to repay, this can be arranged through the debt collections department but you will have to fight quite hard to get this. As for compo, again it depends how hard you complain.

In future, check your bills every quarter and submit a meter reading if necessary to avoid this sort of thing hapenning again.

As for the billing system Cardew, if I spent £800 million on a new software program, which also costs £15,000 per user per year to licence, is hated by the majority of the staff and has this many "teething issues", I think I would be getting rid and asking for my money back.