British Gas removes guarantee dates from SoLR tariffs...

lisyloo

The email transcript doesn’t always work, but when you have the chat you can go to the print option and save a pdf.

turtlethegreat

I was a People's Energy customer who was transferred over to British Gas. I got the price change email the other day and remembered that the initial tariff contract British Gas sent me in September said "Price Guaranteed until 30th June 2022". My understanding being yep this a variable tariff but we are guaranteeing the price until June 2022, and then it returns to be variable.

I used the online chat function yesterday to query this. After a long time, and what I felt was an attempt to obfuscate and not even acknowledge my question about what 'price guaranteed' meant, the person I was chatting to eventually said it was a typo. Strange typo considering other SoLR tariffs had completely different dates...

In the end they offered me £10 compensation per fuel (£20 I guess is something). I still feel they are trying to renege on a contract. I think at the time had a known it was not guaranteed until June, I would have taken a fix that was offered in Dec, which is better than the April numbers (I think).

Does anyone know whether Ofgem publishes what they agreed were the terms when they chose a SoLR to take over the accounts?

lisyloo

Do you have details of the fix you would have taken? 
Thats your best bet (IMO) in proving this typo caused a loss.

turtlethegreat

Yeah so the fix I was offered in December was:

HomeEnergy Exclusive Jan 2024

£1318.17* estimated annual cost Based on paying by Direct Debit# Fixed price energy until 31st January 2024** Click here to read tariff terms Gas: £623.42 Standing charge: 26.123p per day Unit rate: 5.236p per kWh Electricity: £694.75 Standing charge: 33.086p per day Unit rate: 24.426p per kWh

So the standing charge, and unit rate (especially gas) are notably lower than the April price rise.

andyrpsmith

Just come off the phone with British Gas about my welcome tariff from Neon Reef price guarantee to 31st Aug 2022. They basically said it will be going up on 1st April and all fixed rate tariff are being cancelled. They recorded my compliant and said it would be closed straight away as there was nothing they could do about the rise. They are sending me a copy of the complaint. They are of course getting many calls about it.

jobdone1

andyrpsmith said:

Just come off the phone with British Gas about my welcome tariff from Neon Reef price guarantee to 31st Aug 2022. They basically said it will be going up on 1st April and all fixed rate tariff are being cancelled. They recorded my compliant and said it would be closed straight away as there was nothing they could do about the rise. They are sending me a copy of the complaint. They are of course getting many calls about it.

Exactly what they said to me, so I'm giving it eight weeks and off to the ombudsman.

SalMoh

Make an official complaint like I have by completing their online complaints form. This way you will have a reference number and evidence of the complaints team responding to your query.

andyrpsmith

Yes I filed a complaint with the representative while on the phone, BGAS are sending me a copy of it via post. They said I can refer the complaint to OFFGEM. 

Gerry1

andyrpsmith said:

Yes I filed a complaint with the representative while on the phone, BGAS are sending me a copy of it via post. They said I can refer the complaint to OFFGEM. 

You would need to complain to the Ombudsman because Ofgem don't deal with individual complaints.

SalMoh

This is the response I’ve received today.

Dear Mr …….

As you’ll remember, you’ve recently been in touch and asked us to look into an important issue regarding your tariff with British Gas.

I’ve investigated your complaint and account and have identified the following information to resolve your complaint.

British Gas took over your supply after Neon Reef declared themselves bankrupt and we presented a tariff, the Welcome to British Gas tariff, to Ofgem which they accepted as the tariff for all Neon Reef customers.

Neon Reef, along with several other energy companies went bust after charging customers less than the wholesale energy markets were charging, thereby resulting in them losing money and having to declare themselves bankrupt.

The unit rates on the Welcome to British Gas tariff are higher than Neon Reefs unit rates as a result of the fluctuating wholesale energy costs and are subject to the governments recent Price Cap announcement for all tariffs that aren’t on a fixed unit rate.

In your contract pack we sent on 24/11/21 (see screenshot) it states your tariff is variable (not fixed) and is therefore subject to the government price cap announcement. It also states that the prices are guaranteed until 31/7/22, this means that it is guaranteed your unit rates will not increase above the level set by the government price cap, not that the unit rates won’t increase at all.

(Original image showing prices guaranteed till July 22) 

I’m sorry if the wording in the contract pack was misunderstood, that was never our intention, and Ofgem confirmed we were the supplier for all Neon Reef customers based on this tariff that we presented to them.

If you feel I haven’t answered all your questions, or you‘re not satisfied your complaint has been completely resolved, please feel free to contact me on the details above. I’d be more than happy to help you further.

If you’re happy with what’s been done you don’t need to do anything and I’ll make the arrangements to close the complaint down for you on 22 March 2022.

I’m glad we’ve been able to get to the bottom of this. We know it’s not nice when things don’t work, so thank you for taking the time to contact us.

If you’d like information about our complaints handling procedure you can view a copy by either going online at britishgas.co.uk/energycomplaints, or by getting in touch and one of our advisors will arrange to send you a copy free of charge.

 

Kind regards

(Name removed)

Complaints Management Team