Neon Reef - any views?

Chino

MWT said:

.. but the rules do include that the customer must not have behaved unreasonably

Exactly where in "the rules" is this stated?

MWT

Chino said:

MWT said:

.. but the rules do include that the customer must not have behaved unreasonably

Exactly where in "the rules" is this stated?

Here you go...

Keep in mind that the interpretation is down to the Ombudsman and that really can go in surprising directions at times.

ivanleo

There's a huge difference between not reminding your supplier to send you an invoice on the one hand, and refusing to give meter reads / refusing to let a meter reader into the property / bypassing the meter on the other.

Also those are not the actual rules, it's a summary presumably from the OfGem website. The rules themselves would be written in rather more legal sounding language in order to reduce the scope for ambiguity.

MWT

Totally up to you how you handle your situation, but the Ombudsman has taken views before based on the 'bill-shock' principle which I do not agree with, but they have applied consistently, which includes for example that refunds of credit from your account can be reversed at any time to meet corrected billing beyond the 12 month limit as there is no 'shock' as the amounts you originally paid towards your bill were intended to cover use at that time.

The fact that reversal of a refund you thought you were due causes a shock is not something the Ombudsman recognises...

So all I can say is that if you intend to use the back-billing rules to exploit a billing failure that you are entirely aware of and failed to query, don't be surprised if the decision doesn't go your way, especially when it is in the proximity of a SoLR process...

Do let us know how it goes, as each Ombudsman decision adds to our knowledge on these things...

ivanleo

I doubt it'll come to that, BG so far have been very accommodating. At one property where there was a metering issue, they offered to not charge me anything for the six weeks that elapsed between the switchover and the date that they installed a smart meter.

If it did come to a dispute, I might use the county court rather than the ombudsman.

MWT

ivanleo said:

I doubt it'll come to that, BG so far have been very accommodating. At one property where there was a metering issue, they offered to not charge me anything for the six weeks that elapsed between the switchover and the date that they installed a smart meter.

If it did come to a dispute, I might use the county court rather than the ombudsman.

Hopefully it won't come to that, but you may find that the County Court pre-action protocols will make it difficult to avoid the Ombudsman as a necessary step without good reason.

ghostwriter

AbbieCadabra said:

no final bill on my NR a/c yet, but the final reading i supplied (& used by BG as opening read) is now showing (it might have been there earlier but i hadn't noticed).  We'll be owed nearly £300 so it would be good to see a bill to reflect this before account access disappears!

I'm in the same position as you and I'm sure there are many, many more.  All we can do is download every statement, screeshot every page and trust that it'll get worked out eventually.

The BG page https://www.britishgas.co.uk/solr/neon-reef.html says that they're still working on ity.

400ixl

I am in a similar position, last bill on Neon Reef is beginning of November. It shows the customer reading I loaded on the 2nd December and BG shows that same reading I gave them for the same day.

Even with the bill to be paid for November (I had cancelled the DD to come out at the end of November) I will still be in credit with NR for about 1 months worth of billing. So not a massive amount, but will come in handy to have back soon as the buffer for when the Oct 22 fix comes to an end.

I assume, other than having the last bill saved and a capture of the meter readings screen there is not really anything else I can / need do?

400ixl

ghostwriter said:

The BG page https://www.britishgas.co.uk/solr/neon-reef.html says that they're still working on ity.

I see that page says that the transfer tariff will be going up in April as it is variable. Has it said that all along, or have they changed it? Not that it matters to me now but interesting if they have changed that recently.

QrizB

400ixl said:

ghostwriter said:

The BG page https://www.britishgas.co.uk/solr/neon-reef.html says that they're still working on ity.

I see that page says that the transfer tariff will be going up in April as it is variable. Has it said that all along, or have they changed it? Not that it matters to me now but interesting if they have changed that recently.

It's a change, there's a thread on it here:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6332617/british-gas-welcome-to-british-gas