British Gas Overcharged & Billed Our Business £12,000. Ombudsman ruled in my favour. £100+Apology?!

charlieblenner

I was helping my Mother's business with cost reduction and discovered many problems with big companies like BT...but the biggest was Britsh Gas.
We were having our meter read by gas board meter readers every 6 weeks or so - but I realised none of these readings were being logged (still no idea why).
On further investigation I could not comprehend how in 2018 and 2019 we had 2 'spikes' of usage - where we were supposed to be using 20-40 times more gas than usual for a period of several months.  I looked into the readings and estimated readings. I thought that we could trust the 'actual' readings - but it still did not add up.  British Gas said it all looked very normal to them....(I contested that 20x more use was not normal)...they said meters were rarely wrong and we would have to pay to have the meter looked at by an electrician at our own cost. They didn't answer my messages and I was rebuffed on the phone. I finally went to the Ombusdman. They just ruled in my favour. The truth is more shocking than I realised.  Our meter goes from 0-9999 cubic feet. The meter went round the clock to 0 at the beginning of 2017. It's now at 2100 (Aug 2000).  It turns out that supposed  'actual' readings  of 5000, 5500 and 5900 in 2018 and 2019 were false (all from the same meter reading person) - and then the estimated readings kicked in etc. What occurred is that we were charged (and we paid) for the meter going round the clock (9999 cubic ft of gas) we had not used. This is well over £12,000 (we think!). The ombudsman has said (if we agree) that they will rebill us from 2017 onwards (2000 cubic feet of gas) and refund us the error (10,000 cubic feet of gas). They will also give is £100 and a letter of apology. Considering the overcharge is our money anyway - and they almost got away with overcharging us to the tune of  £12,000....I think this is pretty poor. I am about to accept the decision as I dont know what else to do. I thought I might post this and see if anyone had any thoughts?

charlieblenner

Sorry - it was supposed to read "The meter went round the clock to 0 at the beginning of 2017. It's now at 2100 (Aug 2020)!

JJ_Egan

As this is a business not consumer contract what are you looking for .

Has the supplier indicated how much they will refund for usage ??

charlieblenner

Dear JJ_Egan,  They will refund us the money that they have overcharged us (approx £12,000). This is wonderful news - but it is OUR money not theirs. I just think £100 and an apology is a bit of a joke considering they did EVERYTHING in their power to fob me off. I spend around 10-15 hours on spreadsheets, readings, bill compilations etc. I will probably just accept the decision but I thought it worth asking in the ether....I dont want to go to small claims etc. I just dont have the time. I showed our meter many many times to the gas board man and none of those readings were logged. If they were I might have had more success complaining....

Robin9

Apart from the reading/billing issues have you looked into the contract implications.

Your mother will have taken out a contract with BG with an actual termination date.  If your mother did not take positive action to search out a new supplier or accept the new BG terms it will have been being charged at a possibly much high rate.

Get BG to confirm the state of her contract . What is she paying ? Quite possibly a standing charge of £4 a day and perhaps 4p a unit.

charlieblenner

we are on a good and competitive price for gas at the moment - fixed till next year. It still does not effect the amount of money that is due back to us surely?

Robin9

charlieblenner said:

we are on a good and competitive price for gas at the moment - fixed till next year. It still does not effect the amount of money that is due back to us surely?

No - just wanted to ensure your contract was up to date. Let us know when all is resolved.

MWT

charlieblenner said:

Considering the overcharge is our money anyway - and they almost got away with overcharging us to the tune of  £12,000....I think this is pretty poor. I am about to accept the decision as I dont know what else to do. I thought I might post this and see if anyone had any thoughts?

I'd have to say that whoever is managing your Mother's business bears equal responsibility for not properly checking the gas consumption and the bill for the last three years, so not sure what more you expect to get from BG...

All of the details necessary to know the bills were wrong were available to the business but nobody bothered to check...

I'd take what is being offered and hopefully both sides learn from their mistakes.

dogshome

I'm afraid that the Ombudsman service isn't known it's for generosity when handing out compensation payments to abused customers, £100 is rare as it's usually in the £40's

It was better when we had Energywatch at the start of privatisation, as they fined n'power £40 million for billing blunders - Up till today because of industry lobbying, we have gone through 4 Energy consumer protection Agencies and now the Citizens Advice Bureau are in the chair - Manned by volunteers with no powers to levy penalties.

The Ombudsman Service is a Ltd Company funded by fee's the suppliers pay to join the club, topped up by charges for investigating Customer Complaints made to them - They will never, never rock the boat by imposing serious money compensation on a supplier

Petriix

Make sure that they add interest to the refund. If their offer is genuinely insufficient then consider legal action but you may be taking a risk.

Grumpy_chap

The moral of the story is to keep your own meter readings and check the bills regularly, not allow several years to pass with a potentially massive error to be resolved.  As a commercial site, it is quite possible that the meter went through 'zero' in 2017 and has done so again by 2020.