British Gas complaint

Julieloolibelle

Hi there,
A bit of advice needed; I will keep the story short!

My 95 year old father in law received a gas bill from British Gas for £1300 for a quarter. On looking back through old bills back to 2013, I found some quarters had been charged twice and that a note had been put on his bill to say his meter had been changed in 2013. I asked him and he had no recollection of anyone coming to do this. Also, his (incorrect) first name had been added to the bill for some mysterious reason.

Contacted British Gas who told me that he in fact owed over £3000 as his meter was an Imperial one (with 4 digits) and he had been charged in metric units (metric meters have 5 digits). They said they could only charge him for the past year for gas he had been undercharged for.

After many telephone calls, they have decided that they will take just over £300 off the bill but he still owes them just over £1000. Can this be right? They have acknowledged that they have had the details of his meter wrong and that they have undercharged him. I said that this would be the same as if I had been buying food at my local supermarket for the past 19years and suddenly they asked me for £1000 to cover their mistake because their tills had been wrong!

Also, they have called him and sent him letters when I asked them to send everything to me and this has resulted in him becoming distressed and unwilling to turn his gas on at all!

I have now been told they will not make another offer and asked id I would like to escalate this to the Ombudsman.

Has anyone got any thoughts or ideas please or am I being unreasonable in thinking he shouldn't pay for British Gas' mistake?

Thank you in advance

Bluebirdman_of_Alcathays

The supermarket analogy doesn't work - you don't enter into a contract in advance for them to supply you with food. That is what happens with Gas and Electricity.


But, lets say you did, the supermarket can go back 6 years (as can any business in England + Wales) to recover monies owed. The large energy firms have agreed to only back bill for 1 year - so this works in your favour in this instance.


The principle that companies can correct a billing error is well enshrined - imagine if you were a small trader, and a typo left a 0 off your bill? Would you not want some mechanism to amend this?


Ultimately, your FIL has used the energy, and not paid for it. Fault is largely irrelevant. He's had £2k written off, which is more than fair.

naedanger

Julieloolibelle wrote: »

Hi there,
A bit of advice needed; I will keep the story short!

My 95 year old father in law received a gas bill from British Gas for £1300 for a quarter. On looking back through old bills back to 2013, I found some quarters had been charged twice and that a note had been put on his bill to say his meter had been changed in 2013. I asked him and he had no recollection of anyone coming to do this. Also, his (incorrect) first name had been added to the bill for some mysterious reason.

Contacted British Gas who told me that he in fact owed over £3000 as his meter was an Imperial one (with 4 digits) and he had been charged in metric units (metric meters have 5 digits). They said they could only charge him for the past year for gas he had been undercharged for.

After many telephone calls, they have decided that they will take just over £300 off the bill but he still owes them just over £1000. Can this be right? They have acknowledged that they have had the details of his meter wrong and that they have undercharged him. I said that this would be the same as if I had been buying food at my local supermarket for the past 19years and suddenly they asked me for £1000 to cover their mistake because their tills had been wrong!

Also, they have called him and sent him letters when I asked them to send everything to me and this has resulted in him becoming distressed and unwilling to turn his gas on at all!

I have now been told they will not make another offer and asked id I would like to escalate this to the Ombudsman.

Has anyone got any thoughts or ideas please or am I being unreasonable in thinking he shouldn't pay for British Gas' mistake?

Thank you in advance

If they made a mistake they can still recover any undercharging for the last year. (For most suppliers the time period for recovering charges, including those they failed to collect due to their own errors, is 5 or 6 years.)

That said, how much has he paid over the last year? To have underpaid £1300 in just one year seems surprising unless he has been billed/paid very little over the last year.

naedanger

Bluebirdman_of_Alcathays wrote: »

The large energy firms have agreed to only back bill for 1 year - so this works in your favour in this instance.

The back billing principle is mandatory for all domestic energy suppliers not just the large ones.

Back-billing principle
If your supplier is at fault, it will not seek additional payment for unbilled energy used more than 12 months prior to the error being detected and a corrected bill being issued.

http://www.consumerfocus.org.uk/files/2010/01/Back-billing-leaflet-2012.pdf

Julieloolibelle

Hi there,
I fully understand what you have said and thank you for your feedback.
The problem is that I find it hard to believe that he has used over £1000 worth of gas in the past year when his other bills have been nothing like this. They have acknowledged that they should have noticed the error as his meter has been read many many times over the past 19 years so I am just wondering why they don't ask the meter reading company to pay for their mistake instead of him ?
Just a thought

Julieloolibelle

Hi there,
They sent him an Annual Summary for usage between 21/2/2014 - 20/2/2015 of £482.60.

naedanger

Julieloolibelle wrote: »

The problem is that I find it hard to believe that he has used over £1000 worth of gas in the past year when his other bills have been nothing like this.

I also find this quite difficult to believe. If they have written off £300 from what he is due to pay then they are saying he used £1300 more than he paid for gas in the last 12 months. I would be aiming to check this more closely.

They have acknowledged that they should have noticed the error as his meter has been read many many times over the past 19 years so I am just wondering why they don't ask the meter reading company to pay for their mistake instead of him ?
Just a thought

I strongly suspect the contract the meter reading company has with BG will cover what BG can charge in respect of errors and I very much doubt it will make the meter reading company pay for under read energy. Even if it did there would be no obligation on BG to pay that to the customer.

footyguy

Julieloolibelle wrote: »

Hi there,
I fully understand what you have said and thank you for your feedback.
The problem is that I find it hard to believe that he has used over £1000 worth of gas in the past year when his other bills have been nothing like this. They have acknowledged that they should have noticed the error as his meter has been read many many times over the past 19 years so I am just wondering why they don't ask the meter reading company to pay for their mistake instead of him ?
Just a thought

What evidence do you have that the meter reading company has made any error?

Assuming you have any evidence, how much do you think it fair for a meter reading business to pay for an error in reading a meter? 2/3rds of all the energy as your FIL used?

Using your supermarket anaology, if you bought a trolley load of goods and found you have been overcharged on one item, how much would you expect to receive when you complain? 2/3rds of the total trolley cost?

Back to reality. What would you consider a fair price your FIL should pay for the energy he has consumed? Bearing in mind, he regularly receives the bills/statements and the error would be obvious on each of these if he had checked.

naedanger

Julieloolibelle wrote: »

Hi there,
They sent him an Annual Summary for usage between 21/2/2014 - 20/2/2015 of £482.60.

Very roughly:

They thought his annual usage was £482.60 but based on an imperial meter that was reading only 1/2.83 times the correct usage.

So his actual usage in a year would be 482.6*2.83 = £1,365.76

If he actually paid £482.60 then his undercharge over the year would be £1,365.76 - £482.60 = £883.16

They write off £300 gives £583.16

So it seems worth questioning how BG calculate he still owes around £1000 if they have applied the back billing principle and deducted both his actual payments over the year and deducted a further £300.

That also still leaves the question of whether annual gas usage of £1,365 seems reasonable. What type of property is it, how warm is it kept, how well is it insulated? Can you find gas bills prior to the meter being changed and if so how much were they for?

molerat

You need to check meter reads and serial numbers against bills. Is it an imperial meter ? Was it changed ?

Post up some meter reads and dates.

My daughter keeps her cold house like a sauna and her bill is around £870 for 28000 kWh.

D_M_E

You say you found a note indicating the meter was changed in 2013 - I think this means the meter is a metric one and he is therefore being overcharged by about 3x his actual consumption.

You need to check what the meter is - is it imperial (cubic feet) or metric (cubic meters) and what is he being charged for - look at the bill and compare what it says with what is written on the meter.