Can British Gas Do this

Terrylw1

blue_monkey wrote: »

it's funny, I have my bill beside me and just had to add to this. We are all electric and run about 8 of the Glen style oil filled rads as our electric (just changing these as well to timered electric heaters that will go on in the evening and mornings) and have 2 young children, one just started school and one in the school nusery. This time last year the electric heaters were on all day every day. This year I've have them on briefly - mainly for drying clothes for an hour or so and before the kids have a bath to warm the bathroom, my last bill at the end of September was over £280 in CREDIT. Despite this they have upped my DD Amount by another £14 a month and we now pay £146 a MONTH for our electricity, our bill for June through to end September was £165.00, so around £12 a week in the spring/summer. If this figure was about right for 26 weeks of the year, say End of March through to End of Sept, and the rest of the time we had our heating on (I also use the tumble drier, which I do all through the year if the weather is wet anyway) they are estimating our bill, each week, in those 6 months to be £66.00 a WEEK!! We pay it, they keep our money regardless of whether we have used the electricity or not, they certainly don;t call me and say 'Mrs Blue, you've paid to much money, I'll give that back to you'. I personally think it is criminal. They should make an adjustment quartly on each bill either upping it or paying back the money they have taken and we have not used electric for, not at the start of each year when your account is already £280 in credit. This means for each WEEK we are not using the heating or dryer (so far 5 weeks as I certainly do not think it is that cold at the moment) they are getting an extra £54 (plus bank earned interest!!) off us for doing diddly squat.

I agree with you, but until Ofgem place an obligation on them - they don't have to. BGas do it at 6 months, some Supplier doing every 12.

It should be done at the seasons but you are talking a lot of customers and a lot of letters. Plus all the extra staff needed to look into some of them. So, it's not financially of benefit to them so must come from the regulator.

They rake in tons of interest from the overpayers, but then you've got all the disputes & non payers so from their point of view it probably doesn't earn them much. From yours, you lose out on interest.

It's the same in a lot of industries. BT do it as well and they don't give them back as much as BGas do. It's an old fashioned way of managing DD customers, not a new one.

Just look at industries such as mobile phones where you have to pay a deposit if you fail a credit check. Now, I know of billing companies that used to sit on those deposits and not refund them unles the customer actually asked despite it being contractual! One I worked for had hundreds of thousands of pounds earning interest like this.