British gas billing error

carlosuk

Hi,

Bit of a difficult one, I got my bill from British gas on Friday (online) and they have applied a £1500 charge to my account, so I called on Tuesday to query this and they didn't understand what this was from,.so after a bit of digging I was told it's to do with a debt on a prepay gas meter with eon that had been redirected to my account I explained that I'd never had a prepay gas meter and was only briefly with eon when I first moved in to the house in 2009, they said that the debt is for between December 2011 and November 2013 but they said they would investigate and get back to me.

I phoned this morning as they hadn't got back to me and after waiting for the agent to come back to me I was told that the issue was that a customer of eon had a prepay meter with the same serial number as mine and when they were topping there meter up, the money was being applied to my account rather than theirs and so eon were reclaiming the money which has been applied to my account which now means that I haven't been paying enough for my energy and so now I need to start paying it increasing my monthly payment from £100 per month to over £300 per month which I explained i can no way afford, i acknowledged that i had seen a few random credits of £10 here and there when i first joined British gas but i brought it to their attention on several occasions and they removed them from my account but was a few hundred pounds at most not £1500, but they dispute this and as i no longer have the emails from this time period i have no evidence to support my case.

I was passed onto someone in the department who deals with customers who cannot afford to pay their bills, she was very pleasant and acknowledged that i had been put into this situation through no fault of my own, but basically i have used that amount of energy and now need to pay for it (not as blunt as that) and started talking about having a prepay meter which i said no and that i cannot afford more than £100 per month which she said isn't enough which at this point i got cut off.

I waited for 10-15 mins in case she called me back, but as she didn't i phoned back and got put back in the queue so i decided to hang up as i had already been on the phone for over an hour and had stuff to do, so i emailed them asking for copies of all my bills and payment history (the bill history on the website only goes back two years), i asked them to also look into their emails for my original messages on the matter and also for the agent to call me back to sort out my payments.

Where do i stand on this as i have no evidence to back myself up and am relying on British gas to give me this information?

Thanks.

spiro

If these spurious credit were applied and removed from your account they will have a record of it. Write a letter explainthat these ooccurred and that they were removed from the account so you owe nothing. They then have 8 weeks to investigate and reply to you.

carlosuk

Hi,


An update on this, I contacted british gas on several occasions asking them to send me copies of my bills etc as well as to keep my payments at £100 per month until this matter has been resolved and they ignored me, so last night I put in a formal complaint and then later this afternoon got a reply basically saying that the lowest they can put my payment to is £258 per month, my issue is with eon and I need to contact them (even though I was with BG during the timeframe in question) and they are saying again that it is a debt I have from EON and then if I want copies of my bills etc I need to put in a request under the data protection act and pay them £10 to do so! They consider these points have resolved the complaint.


I have of course replied and asked them to clarify what the amount is question is actually relating to as they keep telling me different things and have also told them that they will cause me severe financial hardship if they insist in taking £258 per month from me.


Would it cause me further pain if I cancelled my direct debit and then setup a standing order for £100 per month?


Any other advise or should I go straight to the ombudsman as they consider my complaint resolved?


Thanks,
Carl.

dogshome

Incredible
For a start, "An Eon Pre-Pay Gas meter has the same number as your Standard meter", is a lie. The reality is that Eon cocked up their own system by mis-recording a meter number and are now useing BG to collect their loss from an innocent party.

The OP needs to look at past billing, the problem covers the period Dec 2011 to November 2013, so what was he paying toward his gas billing over that period compared to today? - With someone else contributing £1500 it should have been around zero.

As for the OP haveing to pay under the FoA system for past copies of bills that he is being hounded for, the mind boggles.

This needs a WRITTEN Compliant to BG with a copy to Eon, demanding that Eon produce a list of the monies diverted the the OP's gas account, which shows the individual amounts and the dates they were transferred.

Independantly, BG should provide a list of amounts and dates that they recieved and applied to the OP's account.

If there is any prevarication, the OP should ask that as the matter is complex, Eon should take the matter to the Small Claims court to prove their case,
and meanwhile advise his bank that not to pay any D/Debit demands from BG that exceed £100

ToomanyPies

Doesn't this come under the back-billing rules?

dogshome

Probably a 'NO' for Back Billing relief
The situation is rather like a bank crediting a customers account with money that should have gone into someone elses.
The bank is entitled to the money back, and have up to 6 years to claim it.

The situation here is that Eon dribbled money into the OP's account over a period of nearly two years, and kept on paying it in despite the OP querying some of the phantom credits, which BG then withdrew.

So what became of these quiried credits?
Did BG return the money to Eon, in which case Alarm Bells should have rung a lot earlier than 3 years after the event,
or more likely.
BG lodged it in their own 'Orphan' account that holds funds of unknown ownership?

This why it's vital that the OP gets a fully detailed account - Actual Values & Dates - of monies mis-directed by Eon, and, has the same information from BG regarding reciepts and dates

This information is not only needed so the OP can verify or disagree with the amount claimed, it is a must if Eon want to push the matter of recovery through a court.

I suspect the once the Complaint letter is recieved, BG will quickly back off from their agressive Doberman attitude to this debt

carlosuk

Hi,


Thanks for all your responses on this matter, you've given me some great ideas on how to pursue this.


My main concern at the moment is that they are due to take the first higher monthly payment on the 1st of May and I am not in a position to pay this, not that they care! What options do I have and if push came to shove and I cancelled the direct debit and setup a standard order paying £100 instead, what are the possible consequences?


Thanks again!

Joyful

The possible outcome eventually if you did that would be to take you to court and fit a prepayment meter. You need to find out first how much you are using then agree a timescale for the debt to be paid back on top of usage. There is an Out of Policy team that can put the debt on a payment plan over a longer period.

carlosuk

Which therein lies part of the problem, I was put through to that department on my second call and got cut off and was promised I would be called back by the same person I spoke to which never happened, despite me making several requests for this to happen, I don't even know the name or number of this department to call back myself.


According to the ombudsman, they should "put on hold" the disputed part of the bill but they are unwilling to do this, my energy usage through the winter has been around £100 per month, and much less now and will be even less through the summer.


All I want is for them to keep my monthly payments the same whilst this is being investigated, but instead they are refusing and putting obstacles in the way and to be honest treating me like I've put myself into this situation which I haven't.

dogshome

The phone calls don't count for anything so far as a Complaint is concerned
WRITE a letter and post today, headed Complaint ( In bold just like that )

Your Ref - Account No. xxxxxxxxxxx
Complaint
Dear Sirs,
With regard to your demand for £2,500 as recompense to Eon for monies they alledgedly mis-directed to my BG gas account.

Please note that without proof positive that Eon did mis-direct one of their Pay-As-You-Go customer's payments to my account, together with the individual dates and payment values of these transfers, I do at this time not accept responsibility for this debt.
I have however written to Eon asking for this information.

If and when I do get clear answers from Eon, there then remains the question of how and when these payments were credited to my BG gas account, particularly as when I saw 'phantom'credits appear on my account I rang you to ask why, only to be told they were errors and these credits were then cancelled from my account.

Note that with this history, I reqiure from you copies of all my gas bills covering the period December 2011 to December 2013, together with a complete list of the all payments mis-directed by Eon to you, showing the dates and values.

Please note that I have instructed my bank to reject any Direct Debit payment to BG, other than that for my current payment

Yours faithfully



I supect the reason you are getting the Hard Nose attitude from BG is that that they don't really know what happened to a lot of these payments, but, if it all got heavy and Eon/BG took it to law they would have to show the same papertrail you are now asking for
All the best
DOGSHOME

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

carlosuk wrote: »

Hi,

Bit of a difficult one, I got my bill from British gas on Friday (online) and they have applied a £1500 charge to my account, so I called on Tuesday to query this and they didn't understand what this was from,.so after a bit of digging I was told it's to do with a debt on a prepay gas meter with eon that had been redirected to my account I explained that I'd never had a prepay gas meter and was only briefly with eon when I first moved in to the house in 2009, they said that the debt is for between December 2011 and November 2013 but they said they would investigate and get back to me.

I phoned this morning as they hadn't got back to me and after waiting for the agent to come back to me I was told that the issue was that a customer of eon had a prepay meter with the same serial number as mine and when they were topping there meter up, the money was being applied to my account rather than theirs and so eon were reclaiming the money which has been applied to my account which now means that I haven't been paying enough for my energy and so now I need to start paying it increasing my monthly payment from £100 per month to over £300 per month which I explained i can no way afford, i acknowledged that i had seen a few random credits of £10 here and there when i first joined British gas but i brought it to their attention on several occasions and they removed them from my account but was a few hundred pounds at most not £1500, but they dispute this and as i no longer have the emails from this time period i have no evidence to support my case.

I was passed onto someone in the department who deals with customers who cannot afford to pay their bills, she was very pleasant and acknowledged that i had been put into this situation through no fault of my own, but basically i have used that amount of energy and now need to pay for it (not as blunt as that) and started talking about having a prepay meter which i said no and that i cannot afford more than £100 per month which she said isn't enough which at this point i got cut off.

I waited for 10-15 mins in case she called me back, but as she didn't i phoned back and got put back in the queue so i decided to hang up as i had already been on the phone for over an hour and had stuff to do, so i emailed them asking for copies of all my bills and payment history (the bill history on the website only goes back two years), i asked them to also look into their emails for my original messages on the matter and also for the agent to call me back to sort out my payments.

Where do i stand on this as i have no evidence to back myself up and am relying on British gas to give me this information?

Thanks.

Hello Carl and welcome to the Forums.

This is a bit of a strange one but I'll hazard a guess as to what might have happened. As I say, I'm speculating but I did come across something a few years back that seems similar to your situation.

You mention being briefly with us when you first moved in. Do you know if there was a prepayment meter at the property in the past? Before 2009 when you moved in? Perhaps even quite a time before that? You may not know but, if there was, it's likely it was replaced with your credit meter. The prepayment meter may then have been refurbished and re-installed somewhere else. The serial number wouldn't have changed on the refurbished meter and would've been different from your credit meter.

The old meter would've been linked to the prepayment network. This is a behind the scenes infrastructure used by the industry. It electronically handles prepayment transactions including the allocation of payments to specific accounts and suppliers. This link should've been broken when the meter was removed and I suspect it wasn't. If I'm right and the meter was then re-installed somewhere else, the new customer will have been able to top up as usual (probably between December 2011 and November 2013) but these payments would've followed the original link and allocated to your property. These are likely to be the payments you saw and British Gas transferred off your account.

Once a situation like this comes to light, there's a path all suppliers follow to find the payments. Once found, they'll be re-allocated to the correct supplier and then to the customer who made the payments. It looks like these payments were returned to us so they could be credited to the customer who made them.

I don't know about British Gas but, with us, payments through prepayment meters are looked after by a specialist area with access to the industry infrastructure I mentioned. I imagine British Gas have something similar. These are the people best placed to advise about this.

If you contact our prepayment section and give them your old account number (or address if you don't have it), they'll be able to check if there've been any mis-directed payments. Do the same with British Gas too. As spiro says, the payments will have gone somewhere. There'll be a trail from when the payments were made to what subsequently happened to them.

As I said at the outset Carl, I'm speculating a lot and sorry if I've totally gone down the wrong path. It's just that the experience you've described reminds me of a case I dealt with years ago.

Malc