British Gas- Today's saga

astroelle

I had to ring up and request a bill from them as it had been 4 months since the last one. When It came they had seriously overestimated my usage and were going to put my DD up from £64.50 to £82.

I added up last year's bill (£730) added the £90 I currently owe and divided by 12, working out that now I had paid off my small arrears my payment should reduce to £61, even with their overestimate.

So I rang up explaining the estimate was out and the new payments were unreasonably high. She said there was nothing she could do, but that with the revised reading I gave her the payment would be £80 I said I was unable to afford the increase (on Incapacity Benefit) so she canceled the DD without my asking her to :mad:.

I then pointed out that I did not want to cancel the DD only to pay an appropriate amount. She said that she only had authority to reduce the bill to £72 (10% of the sum calculated). So figuring this was some progress and not wanting to lose the DD discount I reluctantly agreed. She went ahead but had to set up a new DD as the last one had been cancelled.

On doing so she said that the computer had automatically recalculated the amount and it would now be £58 a month from August.

I know that several posters have previously found that if a DD gets cancelled it goes up dramatically, but for me it has made a difference.

SwanJon

It may not sound like it, but there is a logic behind this.
This could be what happened.
The DD is set up to run over a year, and if your plan's year was due to end in October, then the system tries to recover the £90 you are behind by the end of the plan, - about £30 extra each month, along with what it now thinks you need to pay for what you are using.
When the plan is cancelled and set back up again a new 'year' starts (may only be 10 months as based on quarterly billing cycle), and the balance is spread over 12 months (*see above), now about £7.50 a month extra.
So your payment drops from £80 to £58 (like how I picked a month to make the maths work?)
If your plan has jumped, this may be one reason for it - ask how many payments are left to see if it would be worth starting again.

Be warned, there's nothing to say they have to set it up again, so be nice, and make sure they use accurate readings so that the plan is as accurate as possible from now on.

astroelle

Yes, I had figured it was something like that :rolleyes:but my issue was with the inflexibility of the system. And pointing out that the cancelling and reinstatement of a DD may work to someones benefit rather than detriment.
And make sure they have accurate readings? I wish.
For some reason even when they read the meter the information almost never gets used for billing and then if I submit a reading they sometimes get rejected (although no one ever tells me this) because my actual readings are so far out of tolerance with their estimation.
They also send bills out at seemingly random intervals anything from 70- 130 days apart which strikes me as slightly unusal for such a major company.
And 18 months after requesting that the meter readers use a password (for security after a couple of strange incidents with meter readers who either didnt have the right info or became aggressive) it's still not in place. The reader comes to the door saying I know I need a password but the system doesnt know what it is.

I probably overreacted a little today :obut every single bill requires time to phone them due to one thing or another.