Got a British Gas problem? Let me sort it for you

latenight

Hi,

I'm a newbie here and haven't really looked into all the other posts complaining about British Gas because what I've read above is all too consistent with the problems I'm experiencing.

My grandfather died five years ago and the BG account was in his name. We informed BG and sent in the relevant documentation but the account remains in my grandfathers name. We didn't mind - we paid the bill and everything was fine.

Last November we received an estimated bill in the post so I decided to read the electricity meter and give an accurate reading. It turned out that the meter reading was 17000 units over the estimated read.

Anyway, a long story short - I've made numerous calls and been made countless promises by CS that they would send somebody out to examine the meter, read the meter (because I'm obviously simple and can't read five numbers in a row!) change the meter, etc. Not a single appointment was kept and I did not receive even an acknowledgement that somebody should have called. I certainly haven't been offered the "standard" £20 inconvenience fee (which should be at least £100 worth by now).

I was able to establish a while back with what I thought was a particularly helpful CS guy that the meter engineers were being sent to the wrong address. Apparently there's a glitch between BG and the meter contractors software and my nan's address wasn't transporting accross properly.

As a result I learned that the meter readings that the bill had been based on were belonging to the other address. The account therefore looks like we've gone a full rotation around the meter.

Just to protect myself from any libel accusations, the above information was given to me by the CS and a representative from the meter contractor during a three way call.

To make matters worse, BG can't establish how long this has been going on for. On at least two of the many occasions I've called up to discuss this issue and given the correct meter read to the CS they've told me I must be wrong and have guessed what the correct read should be so that I'd get a sensible bill. If this is common practice then it undermines the customer readings I've given in the past because what's to say that isn't how the all the previous CS have acted?

There doesn't appear to be any way the common man (or woman) can reach BG complaints department. I've e-mailed the website but not heard anything in over two months. CS operators state that they only refer calls to their supervisor/manager or complaints at their own discretion, and none so far have felt compelled to do so.

At last a manager from the probate department is looking into this. It's not in his remit apparently, but what with the fact they're trying to get over £1600 form a dead person I can see why he's taking me seriously. In fairness to the fellow, he has kept me completely updated that he's still looking into the problem, although he still hasn't been able to make any headway as yet.

Sorry to rant, but I thought I'd share my experiences and a few of the unpleasant truths I've learned about BG with the good people on this site.

BBB, I'd be grateful (and quite frankly, amazed) if you could assist, although as I've said, the person I'm currently dealing with at least appears to be trying and is keeping me updated as to what's going on.

mprice1988

tripled wrote: »

What happened last year was the network was split into regions (8 I think) and some regions sold off. I think Southern Electric actually owns one of them, but BG don't own any.

Yeah Scottish and Southern own part of Scotia Gas Networks which is made up of Scotland Gas Networks and Southern gas networks

sexki11en

BBB, I appreciate you have just had surgery but I e mailed you 2 weeks ago and got a response saying you were in training and would look at it tomorrow for me. So far I have heard nothing. It's not exactly restoring my faith in the way i've already been treated by a company who have blacklisted me - when they don't even supply my property!

BBB

sexki11en wrote: »

BBB, I appreciate you have just had surgery but I e mailed you 2 weeks ago and got a response saying you were in training and would look at it tomorrow for me. So far I have heard nothing. It's not exactly restoring my faith in the way i've already been treated by a company who have blacklisted me - when they don't even supply my property!

Really? I'll check my inbox first thing, I do apologise.

sexki11en

BBB wrote: »

Really? I'll check my inbox first thing, I do apologise.

I really DO appreciate that, and of course i'm not holding you responsible. It's just really frustrating and I don't seem to be the only one. Saying that, BG aren't the only company who don't sort peoples problems out.

andrewh

Martin Very nice of you to do this.

I have a friend who works in Customer Relations in Edinburgh. He says he doesn't really have time to deal with other peoples accounts, any reason why its different for you?

Can you tell me how easy it is to transfer to british gas and would you look after everything for me?

Thanks

BBB

I've sent you a PM!

GRMat158

Hi,
Just want to bring this to your attention, because I think that this is not a very good sales tactic....
I received a phone call from "Sky" tonight telling me about their new partnership with British Gas and would I like to transfer. Laying aside the fact that I do NOT wish these sort of phone calls and I would NEVER agree to such a deal on the phone, I was astonished by the sales pitch.
I was asked how I paid, and when I replied monthly direct debit the lady said that she could work out how much I could save. As I was rather intigued by this, I gave her a rough order of magnitude of my current payments. She came back with a saving on my direct debit of £16 per month!
hmmm I thought!! How does that work??
When I queried how she could tell what my savings would be without knowing my consumption of gas/electricity the reply was along the lines of well if you wanted to save more you can just change the direct debit amount to something lower.
WHAT!!!
At this point I decided to terminate the call and said I would check prices online and was given some dire wanrings about how the discounts she was offering weren't available online... Anyway, on comparison I find that far from saving £16 per month the overall annual bill would be some £40 more!
Paying a low monthly payment to "save" money should not be encouraged as you are then building up a debt.
Hope this doesn't happen to anyone else...

ShakerKev

dc wrote: »

National grid IS part of Centrica (ie BG,) interesting discrepancy in cost.

I too work for BG on the sevice side I can assure you that National Grid are NOT owned by Centrica. National Grid were formerly known as Transco who are the Gas Emergency Service

Cardew

GRMat158 wrote: »

Hi,
Just want to bring this to your attention, because I think that this is not a very good sales tactic....
I received a phone call from "Sky" tonight telling me about their new partnership with British Gas and would I like to transfer. Laying aside the fact that I do NOT wish these sort of phone calls and I would NEVER agree to such a deal on the phone, I was astonished by the sales pitch.
I was asked how I paid, and when I replied monthly direct debit the lady said that she could work out how much I could save. As I was rather intigued by this, I gave her a rough order of magnitude of my current payments. She came back with a saving on my direct debit of £16 per month!
hmmm I thought!! How does that work??
When I queried how she could tell what my savings would be without knowing my consumption of gas/electricity the reply was along the lines of well if you wanted to save more you can just change the direct debit amount to something lower.
WHAT!!!
At this point I decided to terminate the call and said I would check prices online and was given some dire wanrings about how the discounts she was offering weren't available online... Anyway, on comparison I find that far from saving £16 per month the overall annual bill would be some £40 more!
Paying a low monthly payment to "save" money should not be encouraged as you are then building up a debt.
Hope this doesn't happen to anyone else...

You make an excellent point, but it applies to almost every company.

The comparison websites and indeed the various companies themselves have sales personnel whose sole objective is to get you to change company and hence maximise their commission.

To do this they will cut the Direct debit for anyone gullible enough to think that this represents a saving. Added to this is the 'cashback' or 'free' champagne that seems irresistable to some - regardless of the eventual cost.

I have to say that websites like this do nothing to help in this regard as they 'promote' these websites - whose profits are all eventually paid for by us the consumer.