British Gas says we owe £1600+ as we have not paid electricity for 2yrs and getting away with it

dogshome

Suppliers  'losing' sight of one fuel on a Duel Fuel account are not uncommon, it even happens with non-smart meters where the customer has regularly given readings for both.

The fact that BG have been billing for Gas and not Electricity, whilst taking D/D payments and now claim you have had a PAYGO meter that would not deliver Elec until you put cash in it all along, just shows just how badly they have lost the plot

The way the Smart meter system works is that the Gas meter sends its reading signal to the Elec meter, which then sends it on to the supplier - Possible that the Elec meter was sending the Gas reading and not it's own, but that is BG's problem, not yours.

WRITE that letter of Complaint enclosing a record of the D/D payments made, and make a claim for Back-Billing relief

MWT

badmemory said:

Interesting though that they have got gas meter readings & not electric meter readings when the gas meter readings actually go through the electric meter!

I imagine the readings for the electric are going through just fine, the problem seems to be a lack of an electricity account and an associated DD...

savingsavy

Just to give an update on the situation, if anyone is reading this thread still. And also to thank everyone for all your insights. I am fully aware that this should not have happened if I was better at managing bills. 

The matter is now resolved. It took months of back and forth calls. We had to wait for BG to investigate and we had conflicting issues, while they investigate they closed our accounts! Which meant continued DD was cancelled by them, and then they sent us paper bills but they could not payment since the balance on the bill was not correct. They closed our accounts both Gas & Electric to investigate while still supplying us with gas and electric. It took another complaint that they are getting us further into debt before they opened a new account just so we could still make monthly payment before there investigation came up with our balance.

It turns out that several things went wrong at the same time:

• BG confirmed we had yearly paper billing, but BG systems were not sending the letters. Every communication generated for our accounts were just not printed and sent. 
• We were making £110 DD payment monthly which we understood was for both gas and electricity.
• At some point, without any communication from us or any notes from their sides (confirmed by their system), the electric account was closed and a new one opened. So the DD was paying for Gas + payment was made against the closed account for electric. Hence why gas was up to date but electric was running a debt. 
• After investigation, it turned out we over paid electric and under paid gas. The electric balance was used to offset the gas, but there is still balance of £100 odds left which has been included in our current payment plan. 
• Our online account is still not showing things properly, they are currently trying to 'fix' it and we are keeping an eye on bank to make sure payments are going out according to the new tariff we just signed up for with them. We are currently still paying a bit more for the paper bills until things are sorted - just not worth the hassle. 

I will say though, that the advice to go through bank statements as proof of payment and to complain, was instrumental in solving this,
 thank you
Streaky_Bacon 
and
dogshome.
 With these, we were able to make them look into where our payments were going. We spoke to a lot of their customer service and complaints people, who would not believe what we were saying, to be honest, the whole thing sounds fake to me too!. If we had the money to pay the outstanding £1600, we would have paid straight away. Thank you for all your help, we have learned from this!

phillw

savingsavy said:
We are currently still paying a bit more for the paper bills until things are sorted - just not worth the hassle. 

Did you not ask them to waive the cost until they have fixed their mistake?

dave8204

phillw said:

savingsavy said:
We are currently still paying a bit more for the paper bills until things are sorted - just not worth the hassle. 

Did you not ask them to waive the cost until they have fixed their mistake?

Didn't you read this bit?:
 They closed our accounts both Gas & Electric to investigate while still supplying us with gas and electric. It took another complaint that they are getting us further into debt before they opened a new account just so we could still make monthly payment before there investigation came up with our balance.

nigelbb

You should have only paid for the last 12 months as back billing rules prevent them claiming for payment when they have not sent you bills.
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/consumers/household-gas-and-electricity-guide/who-contact-if-its-difficult-paying-energy-bills/energy-back-billing-guide-your-rights

savingsavy

nigelbb said:

You should have only paid for the last 12 months as back billing rules prevent them claiming for payment when they have not sent you bills.
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/consumers/household-gas-and-electricity-guide/who-contact-if-its-difficult-paying-energy-bills/energy-back-billing-guide-your-rights

Thank you nigelbb. I'm going to call them up to discuss this now. 

savingsavy

phillw said:

savingsavy said:
We are currently still paying a bit more for the paper bills until things are sorted - just not worth the hassle. 

Did you not ask them to waive the cost until they have fixed their mistake?

I get what you meant, I suppose it is only right they waive off the cost of the paper bills since I can't see my bills online until they fix it. 
Thank you. I will ask for this. 

dogshome

Back-billing is applied when a supplier fails to send out bills for 12 months or more.

However the entire basis of the Back-billing rules, is that exists to save families from " Bill Shock"  -  As there have been D/Debits piling up credit, the ruling is that as this credit goes towards paying for the un-billed energy, there is no "Bill Shock" and the Back-Billing rule won't apply

But it does still apply to sums of money that are over and above the D/Debit Credit value