British Gas - Recalcualting your bill?

shand2

We were moved to British Gas when Peoples Energy went out of business.

We pay monthly the exact usage on a variable Direct Debit.

Recently British Gas deleted all our monthly bills and replaced them with one bill covering 6 months.

This resulted in our owing British Gas £0.04p.

These are not 'interim' bills but exact bills that are paid to the penny.

Nothing to get over excited about?

This extra £0.04p comes about beacuse the computer will round up the fractions of a penny when collating all the historical bills.

British Gas say "I’m unsure why anyone has done that and then taken 4p balance from your account"

(Imagine that they have no idea why this has been done!)

I doubt that we are the only people this has happened to.

If British Gas have applied this ruse to all 12 million of their customers  they have collected a further £480,000 .... every 6 months.

Has anybody else experienced this?

Thanks

MWT

shand2 said:

This extra £0.04p comes about beacuse the computer will round up the fractions of a penny when collating all the historical bills.

This is not a 'ruse' it is just the normal application of rounding to fractions, your bill ended up 4p up, someone else may be 4p down.

... and BG certainly didn't apply this to all their customers, but even if they did the net difference would be very small over all.

NorthYorkie

The point everyone really needs to watch out for is BG using a 31 March meter reading as if it were one on 1 April. With me they picked an estimate for 31 March and used my reading as if it was a 1 April reading. The result was that a small amount or my March usage was charged at April rates. Only a few quid in my case BUT imagine how much in total BG have overcharged their millions of customers. 
I have been assured that steps are being taken to correct this and to ensure that it doesn't happen again when the prices go up again in October.

shand2

In reply to MWT

Indeed there would be some who would benefit from rounding down rather than up if British Gas apply that formula and then credit the account, but do they? Perhaps someone who has seen their bill reduced can tell us.

But why are British Gas doing this at all? They have presented their bill and been paid. These are not interim bills.

They cannot / will not explain why they are doing it.

MWT

shand2 said:

But why are British Gas doing this at all? They have presented their bill and been paid. These are not interim bills.

They cannot / will not explain why they are doing it.

In many cases, with those transferred from a failed supplier the initial bills were started from the date the supply actually moved to BG rather than the date BG became responsible for the supply (the date they were appointed as SoLR).

The initial meter readings were also not necessarily the ones that were eventually agreed with the failed supplier.

So those initial bills were just a way to get people paying while they figured out the real starting date and meter reading.

Once they had that information agreed they then reverse all the previous bills and re-bill from the correct date and meter reading.

If your re-billing didn't change anything at all other than rounding errors then you are probably in a minority...

brewerdave

Had a brief "conversation" on chat yesterday with BG re the cancelled but NOT replaced bill. The agent insisted that they were currently disputing opening reads with NR for a number of customers! I  suggested that it was a bit late to do this when NR fell over 5 months ago AND the debits/credits from NR were already showing on accounts - he insisted new bills would be issued when the situation was resolved - I said that does this mean that the debits currently showing as "not invoiced" would be reversed /replaced - he said he didn't know ! 
BG really are a shambles !!

ben_glastonbury

If the reason the bills are not ready yet is because they are in dispute with NR one wonders why they are not open and honest about this with the consumer rather than prevaricating for over three months and claiming to have no idea why the bill is not ready. 

[Deleted User]

shand2 said:

We were moved to British Gas when Peoples Energy went out of business.

We pay monthly the exact usage on a variable Direct Debit.

Recently British Gas deleted all our monthly bills and replaced them with one bill covering 6 months.

This resulted in our owing British Gas £0.04p.

These are not 'interim' bills but exact bills that are paid to the penny.

Nothing to get over excited about?

This extra £0.04p comes about beacuse the computer will round up the fractions of a penny when collating all the historical bills.

British Gas say "I’m unsure why anyone has done that and then taken 4p balance from your account"

(Imagine that they have no idea why this has been done!)

I doubt that we are the only people this has happened to.

If British Gas have applied this ruse to all 12 million of their customers  they have collected a further £480,000 .... every 6 months.

Has anybody else experienced this?

Thanks

Yes but in a different context. Octopus uses 30 minute smart meter data for some tariffs. If any of the 48 daily segments have missing or corrupt data, then Octopus’ system doesn’t raise a charge. Last month, I had a charge of 15p to cover missing data from a day 364 days earlier. Clearly, there is some sought of BackBilling avoidance check built into their system.

molerat

This is a year old thread that has been resurrected.

ben_glastonbury

the thread may be a year old but I'm still waiting for British Gas to sort this out.