New Home - British Gas

jcat12 · 2 November 2021 at 11:38AM

Hi everyone,

I moved into a new home a few weeks ago and British Gas are my inherited electricity and gas supplier. No letters received from them yet and unsurprisingly I cannot get through to them by phone.

A BS smart metre left at the property tells me as the new homeowner I need to go to a URL and register where I am presented with a choice of 2 tariffs, both of which commit me for a year and have exit fees of £50 for gas and £50 for electric.

I have no idea what to do here, my thoughts are:

Do nothing (presumably, I'm on some kind of rolling PAYG tariff with them at the moment?)
Sign up on the tariffs offered and then pay and exit when/if gas prices drop.
Switch supplier now?

Any advice would be much appricated, thanks all.

emmajones1976 · 2 November 2021 at 11:40AM

You need to speak to them (webchat maybe, failing that just keep trying on the phone) and ask (or demand if they get arsey) to be put on the Ofgem capped standard variable rate. Ignore any suggestion you have to go on one of their fixed rates.

Dont do nothing, you will still need to speak to them to register your details (name etc). Switching at the moment is absolutely pointless.

Yet another case of the energy companies being devious here. They know the standard rate will be losing them money yet are not offering it on that online system, when they have to offer it under their license conditions.