British GAS inventing charges

vtallbloke

Im sorry if this is the wrong forum- but I could not work out which one to put it under.

So in summary- we were off-loaded to British Gas when Peoples went under at the end of last year- something I was very unhappy about if I am honest.

I tried to setup a Direct Debit on several occasions with them, but no sooner am I off of the phone, than I get confirmation of a completely different figure- as much as 3 times higher than originally discussed (agreed £130 they made it 370) tried again at £150 they make it £277- but  tried several times again to get a reasonable DD going but they always were trying to front load the account- in the end admitting that this was their policy to protect for the winter months (obviously we were still in that period when trying to get it setup).  So I refused to try for a 4th time and decided we would just wait for the bill after submitting meter reads when requested. We paid all outstanding balance in full at this point for £377 approx.

We get notification early Feb that our refund from our previous supplier was sorted and that we would get a refund of £127.27- we didnt need to do anything it would automatically be applied to our account.

We submit meter readings for end of March and then again in Mid April and get a bill. £582 pounds which Looks about right, but is very very confusing to work out- we have a total bill for elec from the switch over from peoples in Nov but only Gas from Jan- an older statement appears online for the gas from Nov- Mid Jan.

I ask them to tidy this up which they do- showing the total used since Switch for both gas and electric- and we can now see the refund applied (which was not showing previously)- but the credit refund is only for £121.27- and I know its only £6 but thats not the point.

I have challeneged it repeatedly over the last couple of days via their chat app- which pretty much sees a different person for each question/answer often with the new advisor asking you to tell everything (again)

So to the point- They are now insistant that the reason on £121.27 was applied was because we had to pay VAT on the Refund- Which I just dont understand.

Even if this was the case, I have worked out the VAT to be closer to £6.36 not £6 exactly.

Please tell me that they are NOT allowed to apply VAT to my refund?  Otherwise this would imply that if I left current supplier - British Gas - with a credit owing on the account, they can then just decide to add VAT to my refund?

Please can anyone offer any pointers? I just want to pay- but I just cant trust them to correct their error and worry once I send the full payment in- this will just get lost in another invoice somewhere.  I have now asked repeatedly today to esculate to a complaint bascially about an incorrect bill, but yet another advisor comes on and says he/she cant see any of the previous transript.

Help please?

Alderbank

vtallbloke said:

British GAS inventing charges

Im sorry if this is the wrong forum- but I could not work out which one to put it under.

 Plenty of discussions about British Gas in the Energy forum:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/categories/energy

vtallbloke

Thanks @Alderbank I have been routing around these threads. 

Seems I might have more to go on with them than just the issue above. I wonder how quickly they will be keen to resolve that problem compared to now reviewing my tariff info and finding out they have changed the "terms" of their original tariff.

Keep_pedalling

You could choose variable DD rather than fixed, which tends to be a finger in the air then double it calculation.

With variable you pay for what you actually used in the previous month. 

sheramber

When I moved in it took three months and several chat calls before they billed me for usage rather than just the standing charge each month.

It took three months for someone to realise the smart meter wasn't working.

400ixl

They remove the VAT from the credit and then apply the credit to the pre-tax bill so that it is like for like. Doesn't sound like they have done anything wrong here if that is what they have done. You may get a small rounding error.

p00hsticks

vtallbloke said:

So in summary- we were off-loaded to British Gas when Peoples went under at the end of last year- something I was very unhappy about if I am honest.

I'm not sure if this is relevant, but apparently Centrica (owners of British Gas) have recently writtten to Ofgem asking them to intervene in the onboarding process for customers being switched to them as a result of other companies failing, They say that  the adminstrators of the failing companies are apparently taking too long to pass on details of credit balances etc and named the administrators of PFP Energy and Peoples Energy as being the two worst to deal with.....