BG Zero Fix October 22

MWT

Gerry1 said:

ivanleo said:

Gerry1 said:

tg99 said:

ivanleo said:

goatfaced said:

I just asked. Agent ashkay just said sure and raised it for me, said it would be sorted soon. I hope it's that easy! I haven't even given them direct debit details yet. Had a bill this week for 3 months so I've paid that.

There's two variants of the tariff, one with direct debit and the other without. The direct debit version is significantly cheaper.

Do you mean two variants of zero fixed or exclusive fixed or both? What rates do you have down for the DD variant?

BG All Tariffs

Zero Fixed Oct 22 has the same rates regardless of whether you pay by DD, cash or cheque.

No it hasn't, in the easter region at least with DD it's 19.981p per kWh, without DD it's 21.023p per kWh, that's just over a 5% difference.

Strange.... I looked only at South East England where there's no orice difference.

FWIW, I checked Eastern and the gas is the same but electricity is about 5% more expensive if you are not on DD.

fabsaver

Gerry1 said:

ivanleo said:

Gerry1 said:

tg99 said:

ivanleo said:

goatfaced said:

I just asked. Agent ashkay just said sure and raised it for me, said it would be sorted soon. I hope it's that easy! I haven't even given them direct debit details yet. Had a bill this week for 3 months so I've paid that.

There's two variants of the tariff, one with direct debit and the other without. The direct debit version is significantly cheaper.

Do you mean two variants of zero fixed or exclusive fixed or both? What rates do you have down for the DD variant?

BG All Tariffs

Zero Fixed Oct 22 has the same rates regardless of whether you pay by DD, cash or cheque.

No it hasn't, in the easter region at least with DD it's 19.981p per kWh, without DD it's 21.023p per kWh, that's just over a 5% difference.

Strange.... I looked only at South East England where there's no orice difference.

The Northern region also has a 5% price difference, with DD 20.742p and without DD 21.785p.

I tried double checking this with live chat before I set up my DD. Needless to say the chat operator didn't have a clue and insisted there was no difference in the unit rates based on payment method.

When pressed they said the discount for paying by DD was a fixed £15 per annum, rather than a discounted unit rate. I've set up a DD and it'll be interesting to see if this materialises when I get my first bill.

Laputa

I'm obviously being blind, but where on earth do you find the live chat page?

fabsaver

Laputa said:

I'm obviously being blind, but where on earth do you find the live chat page?

https://www.britishgas.co.uk/help-and-support/

There should be a blue box to click on at the bottom right corner of screen.

Sometimes it's easier to get through if you are logged out or use an incognito browser 

ivanleo

fabsaver said:

When pressed they said the discount for paying by DD was a fixed £15 per annum, rather than a discounted unit rate. I've set up a DD and it'll be interesting to see if this materialises when I get my first bill.

You don't need to wait for your first bill, if you set up a DD the tariff updates itself almost immediately, you can verify this by checking the price per kWh in the tariff information box on your account home page.

Laputa said:

I'm obviously being blind, but where on earth do you find the live chat page?

Here https://www.britishgas.co.uk/help-and-support/ a "chat" box appears in the bottom right hand corner. Make sure you are not logged into your BG account when you open the chat or it will tell you that no agents are available. To get rid of the stupid bot thing, just type "agent"

fabsaver

ivanleo said:

fabsaver said:

When pressed they said the discount for paying by DD was a fixed £15 per annum, rather than a discounted unit rate. I've set up a DD and it'll be interesting to see if this materialises when I get my first bill.

You don't need to wait for your first bill, if you set up a DD the tariff updates itself almost immediately, you can verify this by checking the price per kWh in the tariff information box on your account home page.

My account still shows the cash/cheque payment method and associated unit rates. The chat operator said it would take five working days to set up the new direct debit, so I'm assuming that's why it hasn't changed. Once my DD is added the new price per kWh should show on my account hopefully.

However the additional fixed £15 per annum discount the chat operator mentioned would only show on my first bill I think.

SamDude

Another 'win' - now on BG Zero Oct 22 Fix (backdated to beginning of my SoLR).
£30 goodwill because I had to log a formal complaint due to constant chasing, misleading chat promises etc.

prg495

British Gas are certainly a random/inconsistent company to deal with! I also had a call from the complaints team today, but in my case still refusing to honour the original mistake of their web-chat team and switch me to the Zero Oct22 tariff. So have asked for this in writing to take to the Ombudsman.

ivanleo

Well you can see when a company has too much money. They've installed a smart meter in one of the properties and got the closing meter reading wrong by some 11,000 (!) units, contacted them by chat and their solution is to change the opening meter reading to match the closing meter reading so I get some 6 weeks of energy for free (obviously no standing charge on Zero Fixed Oct 22) and going forwards they will bill me based on the smart meter readings. Fine by me but as BG are the supplier, they will have to account to the industry for that consumption so based on current wholesale prices they'll make a loss of over £2,500.

MWT

ivanleo said:

Fine by me but as BG are the supplier, they will have to account to the industry for that consumption so based on current wholesale prices they'll make a loss of over £2,500.

Not really the way it works, they declare and settle the cost for the energy they record as supplied to their customers, they don't just get sent a bill for the energy they supply.

So if they don't record it as supplied to you then they don't pay for it either...