British Gas and their weird unfathomable bill

UniqueMartinFan

BG emailed a demand to us yesterday for £200+. As it had no details on it I asked for a proper copy which arrived by email today. We were transferred to them last November with a credit of £120+ and have paid their bill requests on time since. The new bill shows all previous payments since November and a list of readings by me. But it appears the bills and readings don't tally. i.e. they've not actually asked for the correct payments. They think now we owe the £200+. But what is going on? If they have failed to issue bills at the time of reading then surely that's their problem. Weirdly we received a bill for £5 in March.....£5!!!  Can anyone explain BG's failure to provide accurate and timely bills which match their requests?

MWT

Hard to answer without being able to see the bill, but if you were one of the customers transferred to them as part of a Supplier of Last Resort action, then they have typically been producing their initial bills from the date your supply actually transferred to them which was a few weeks after they were appointed as SoLR and then more recently once they had the agreed readings as at their appointment date they have been reversing out those bills and re-billing from the proper date with the correct opening meter reading.

This can result in an amount owed even if you had been paying the interim bills correctly.

They are entitled to do this and just because a bill was issued previously for a different amount, it does not prevent them from correcting it over this relatively short time period...

t0rt0ise

I have yet to be asked to pay for that extra electricity used between them taking over supply in early September and setting up the account in October. So it's interesting to hear that they are still working their way through customers' accounts. I was hoping I'd been forgotten!

wild666

Ask them to match up meter readings with payments and prices per kWh and SC's. If you've being taking regular readings and putting them into a spreadsheet with the SC's, even if it's not a smart meter. They should tally up with your readings, I take daily readings for electric and weekly for gas as I use so little gas., my daily usage of electric is around 4 kWh and around 1.6 kWh of gas i n summer and around 65 kWh in winter.

400ixl

I had the same, and at least one other has posted similar. The initial bill they provided used a start reading which was well below the readings I had given into the system.

Went onto online chat in the app and told them I believed the bill was using the wrong starting reading, gave them that reading and pointed them to the fact it and following monthly readings had been submitted online.

Got a response that acknowledged the fact and that a new bill had been generated and told me what the value of the new bill was and that it would be uploaded in detail within 48 hours. The new figure given was within a few pence of what I had calculated it should be.

[Deleted User]

Hi,

if you have the start reading and the reading used on the bill you've just received then you can easily work out usage and payments.

Perhaps you could provide these with unit price and standing charge and somebody will calculate for you.

Lumphammer2

I think the transfer from PE and general billing is up the Swannee with B Gas.

Had a completely meaningless bill recently.

UniqueMartinFan

Thanks, I'll have to get hold of them. My issue is they seem not to have been charging us on billing what we've actually been using. They now demand more but don't explain how and when it's allocated so we don't know that they've not "loaded" this into the more expensive periods.