Economy 7 Tarrif error - where do we stand?

footyguy

WoodcutterBoris wrote: »

Hello everyone,

We've been with British Gas for gas and electricity since September 2011 when we moved into our current address.

Our property is old and costs us a fortune to heat and power - about 180 per month in electricity alone!

I've always thought this was too high and recently scrutinised our bills to see what could be 'wrong'.

I noticed that we're on the Economy 7 tariff which charges 17+pence per KWh as opposed to 13p per KWh on a standard tariff. Our bills show figures for night and day rates and we do have the appropriate meter fitted but the Economy 7 has never been used and our 'night rate' figure has never changed.

We've mentioned this to the meter reader on a couple of occasions but have been told something to the effect that 'it's not enabled' or some such. I guess the property must have once used Economy 7 (there are no storage heaters now) but at some point the previous tenant must have asked for it to cease or it'd still be working.

I've scrutinised the bill, and what set me thinking was the part where they say 'we've checked and you're on the best applicable tariff' - well... clearly, with a night rate that never changes we're not on the right tariff and are paying about 3-4pence per KWh too much. We've contacted them and put the above scenario to them and they changed our tariff immediately. There was a bit of a silence when my partner mentioned 'the overpayment' we'd made because of this but pretty quickly they agreed to refund us about £500 for the previous year.

We obviously feel that BG have failed to notice that we're on the wrong tariff since 2011 and we've asked them to re-pay us for the last five years. Naturally they didn't immediately offer to repay in full and have now got back to us offering a further 'good will' payment which is a proportion of what we think they owe us. It also occurs to me that they must at some point have been told that the Economy 7 wasn't required any more (or it'd be working now) and have not switched the property over to the correct tariff...

I'm struggling to discover what our rights are in this matter. It seems straightforward, but BG are saying that they have no obligation to re-pay.

Can anyone help?

Take the bull by the horns and consult a comparison site to find for yourself the best deal for you.

No one is going to pay you any compo for not doing so