B Gas blunder- fight back or payup?

Five_stars

We own a small family restaurant and earlier this year we received an electricity bill for over £17K from our supplier British Gas (our quarterly bill was usually about £450 per qtr).

Unfortunately, due to a computer error at B Gas the restaurant bills had been miscalculated since 2008. B Gas admit it was their error but insist we pay for fuel used but not billed for to date. As B Gas can only go back and rebill for the last 3 years, the debt has been reduced to 11k but it is still a huge amount for a small business like ours.

We have involved the ombudsmen who have said they could instruct B Gas to reduce the bill by a further £400. The Ombudsmen are currently waiting for a response from us,

Our query is should we seek legal advice on this matter although we could not afford to go to court? Should we push for a further reduction?

We are concerned about being blacklisted or incurring a poor credit rating but it goes against the grain to give up without a fight!! Your opinions would be appreciated.

ValHaller

Any background on how or why the error arose?

Nada666

You were running a restaurant but paying not much more than an average family household. And this was British Gas' fault alone?

Come off it. You knew you were underpaying. You've got away with stealing £6,000 worth of power but are still trying to scam even more. Your pockets are lined with £17,000 of cash but can't afford legal representation! Rubbish.

chanz4

Im afraid with a business its only as goodwill reductions are, however you should be checking you usage and giving reads

Five_stars

Thanks very much to all who took the time to reply. The reason for the mistake - B Gas had logged our premises as having a 5 digit meter when in fact it was a 6 digit meter. Therefore every time a reading was taken by an official from B Gas, when the reading was logged onto their system it could not recognise the 6 digits and knocked one of the numbers off to make it compatible with the previous readings.

I must say I expected some barbed comments just because we own a restaurant. Trust me we are far from being fat cats and work long hours for what we earn. That said I accept we should have questioned the level of billing but by the same token I cannot believe that the B Gas computer did not throw up an error message every time they tried to input the correct reading. What irritates me is that as a direct result of their sloppiness we have a £11K bill to repay.

I have taken all comments on board and will probably pay for a consultation with a solicitor before making a decision. No doubt the REAL fat cat, namely British Gas will win the day and we will just pay up :mad:

matelodave

No one has suggested that you are a fat cat and neither is British Gas in this instance, they have made a mistake but you should have noticed it years ago and got it sorted out.

Didn't you ever check the bills against the meter - it's not really all that difficult. Had you done so you would have seen that the numbers didn't match. It really is hard to have a lot of sympathy when you haven't really taken charge and checked that your bills are correct.

One would hope that if you are running a business than you'd be checking that what you pay your suppliers matches what they are supplying you with - gas, electric, water & phone bills aren't really all that different from bills from other suppliers.

I'd wager that you check that their bills match the goods that they are supplying and query them pretty quickly if they don't - why not the utilities.

It's a reasonable offer from BG and why shouldn't you pay for what you've used, If BG have offered to reduce the amount then you should accept it, learn the lesson and get on with it.

Involving solicitors etc will just increase your costs and you'll still have to pay the bill anyway - possibly with BG's costs as well if it goes that far

Cardew

Five_stars wrote: »

We own a small family restaurant and earlier this year we received an electricity bill for over £17K from our supplier British Gas (our quarterly bill was usually about £450 per qtr).

Unfortunately, due to a computer error at B Gas the restaurant bills had been miscalculated since 2008. B Gas admit it was their error but insist we pay for fuel used but not billed for to date. As B Gas can only go back and rebill for the last 3 years, the debt has been reduced to 11k but it is still a huge amount for a small business like ours.

We have involved the ombudsmen who have said they could instruct B Gas to reduce the bill by a further £400. The Ombudsmen are currently waiting for a response from us,

Our query is should we seek legal advice on this matter although we could not afford to go to court? Should we push for a further reduction?

We are concerned about being blacklisted or incurring a poor credit rating but it goes against the grain to give up without a fight!! Your opinions would be appreciated.

I wasn't aware that Utility companies can only go back 3 years for commercial accounts; I thought that it would be the same as the 'normal' legal position on debts of 6 years??

A reduction on a bill from £17K to £10.6K is pretty substantial and if the ombudsman is in agreement with that sum I suspect you have reached the end of the road. You might be able to persuade BG to let you pay it back over a couple of years.

spiro

Cardew wrote: »

I wasn't aware that Utility companies can only go back 3 years for commercial accounts; I thought that it would be the same as the 'normal' legal position on debts of 6 years??

I think for SMEs (small and medium enterprise) that OFGEM is moving towards offering similar protection to them that domestic customers receive but not quite as good e.g. 3 years instead of 1 for back billing.

Nada666

The idea that a business owner does not know how much energy they use is a nonsense. You must have read your meters and worked out your costs. I have never met a restaurant owner who does not bore the pants off all and sundry whinging about fuel costs. They moan about that almost more than staffing or tax. The chances that you did not know to a penny how much you had actually used each and every month is zero.

You knew that you were not being charged the correct amount. Your reluctance to go to court has nothing to do with cost - it is because you know you do not have a leg to stand on and will be wasting away your ill-gotten gains on pointless representation.

Be satisfied pocketing the £6,400 you have already knowingly swindled and cough up the rest you have not managed to get away with.

matelodave

I think Nada is being a bit harsh, but the OP has to accept responsibility to pay for what he owes and is pushing his luck with trying to get it reduced even more.

As I said above, ther's not a lot of sympathy for not doing basic checks and keeping on top of it - surely energy would be fairly high up the list in restaurant costs.