British Gas

schmiffys

Greenus39 said:

Anybody else having trouble with British Gas while they are moving to a new billing system. I don't remember being told about this as a customer.
I cannot see my bills or statements online, British Gas tell me I should be able to see these after 14/08/22, but worried as I don't if I am in credit or debit

Glad it's not just me. I still can't access my accounts on the "new" system, and want to stay in control of my payments and have complete visibility of my account. If I try and access my account using the links to the new system I get an error:


Went to the online chat and they were useless.

Rudolfsmate

Been asked by my parents to look into an issue their having with BG and ended up here. 

Basically for around 6 months they've had issues with their bill not showing up. They've been onto BG countless times about this and were told that everything looked fine on their system and that it was working as it should. It took them around 40 mins for the person to finally acknowledge there was an issue but only after it was pointed out that there were no bills showing on their own system and that the monthly DD payment hadn't been taken since 1st June! And this was a supervisor they were dealing with!

So now their worried that their going to be hit with a massive backdated bill!

Cyberneticist

schmiffys said:

Greenus39 said:

Anybody else having trouble with British Gas while they are moving to a new billing system. I don't remember being told about this as a customer.
I cannot see my bills or statements online, British Gas tell me I should be able to see these after 14/08/22, but worried as I don't if I am in credit or debit

Glad it's not just me. I still can't access my accounts on the "new" system, and want to stay in control of my payments and have complete visibility of my account. If I try and access my account using the links to the new system I get an error:


Went to the online chat and they were useless.

When you log into the new system, you can now see at the top "You have a second account" which you can use to see your old bills and transactions from before the transfer was made - at least, I am able to currently now. Not sure when this went live, so it's worth a try again!

Kishormistry

Looks like the move to the new billing system is a mess especially with rising fuel prices. I received BG bill statement “Here is your final statement” which showed a large credit. Great I thought, but then looked at the details on the statement and it is only for Gas and not for electricity. The chat agent’s response is that they are still in the process moving to the new billing system and eventually will also show my electricity usage. Also the agent asked me to register using a new account number that was provided on chat, but can’t register as I am already registered on my email address. This is going to cause a lot of confusion and distress if the bill statements are inaccurate or partial as in my case. Let’s hope they get new system fully live soon with all the data for accurate billing. 

uss_tish

@Richardxxx exact same issue here with false readings due they say, to billing migration. I gave meter readings in July for gas and elec and these are noted on my statement, but there is a second line for the same date period showing final meter readings that are higher than my own. In the case of the gas reading I only noticed as their ‘final’ reading in July (they didn't read my meters) is higher than my current reading on 1 September.

They have accepted my July readings as correct and will reimburse me the credit on my account but I do wonder how this anomaly occurred during a system migration? The cynic in me thinks they just hiked up the readings to take more money upfront as they couldn't explain why it happened.

Would recommend everyone checks their statements. 

 

Cyberneticist

uss_tish said:

@Richardxxx exact same issue here with false readings due they say, to billing migration. I gave meter readings in July for gas and elec and these are noted on my statement, but there is a second line for the same date period showing final meter readings that are higher than my own. In the case of the gas reading I only noticed as their ‘final’ reading in July (they didn't read my meters) is higher than my current reading on 1 September.

They have accepted my July readings as correct and will reimburse me the credit on my account but I do wonder how this anomaly occurred during a system migration? The cynic in me thinks they just hiked up the readings to take more money upfront as they couldn't explain why it happened.

Would recommend everyone checks their statements. 

 

I had to do exactly the same - I gave actual readings on March 31st, but they used estimates instead. The online chat customer service person though was great and got it sorted, with the credit being added to the new account.

JonWal

Considering the huge number of people that must have been migrated to BG because of small companies folding, I think that this is something that Martin ought to mention (again, if he hasn't already) on his show at the next opportunity.

I received notification of a refund of around £50 recently, which was going to be sent by cheque. Alarm bells immediately started ringing, as I figured that if the refund was not being added to my new account (with Octopus) then it was unlikely for there to be any overlap of data. So no checks and balance in the handover.

Now I duly sent both my old and new providers gas and electricity readings on the day of the switchover - Octopus didn't need them in reality, as they have taken on the 30 minute readings that my smart meters generate (BG could never do this) - but BG ignored those readings and just dreamed up some inflated figures. Which is where Martin's warning should focus.

The assistant at BG, who I gave a very hard time to it has to be said, did take my readings again - which I have photographic evidence of and would encourage everyone to do the same - but she claimed that their system had not recorded the accurate ones that I'd provided. I pointed out that it wasn't my fault if their system wasn't doing its job and that they should get their house in order.

In all the time that we were with BG I had constant difficulties in obtaining a breakdown of what I was being billed for. Statement downloads were met with the errors outlined in previous posts and a request for a paper statement went the same way as my meter readings and never resulted in anything arriving. However, at the point of switching away, I was able to obtain the figures that I needed which I downloaded from their website.

The final bill notification didn't provide this info and it didn't indicate where I could obtain it, which is, frankly IMO, sinister.

The final insult is that I was told that it will take 12 days for me to receive the recalculation of my bill. For a quick bit of subtraction and multiplication which I did in under 2 minutes? I ran the numbers on a napkin and figure that my refund will be close to £185.

Knowing that the calls are recorded, I made it very clear to the BG assistant that I felt that this was an obviously devious and dishonest practice. I can't imagine that the bosses at British Gas are going to listen to the rants of one man that happened to see through the smoke and mirrors, so come on Martin. There must be hundreds, if not thousands of people in this position who are being taken for a ride by BG. Look into this and get the warning out there.

schmiffys

Cyberneticist said:

When you log into the new system, you can now see at the top "You have a second account" which you can use to see your old bills and transactions from before the transfer was made - at least, I am able to currently now. Not sure when this went live, so it's worth a try again!

 I can access my old bills without issue, it's accessing my "new" account which is the problem... not sure where you're seeing "You have a second account" as I don't have it on my page:

schmiffys

Update - managed to get onto someone on chat today who actually wanted to resolve access to my "new" energy account for me. It turns out the quickest way to achieve this was to provide a new email address and setup a new online account for me. This has now given me access to my new energy account (and it is a new account, with a new "Axxxxxxx" account number), which has all my direct debits and payments which have been migrating from my previous energy account. So I'm quite relieved to see my direct debits haven't been paid into a black hole for the last 3 months.

Tech support said the issue was that they couldn't use my current email address because it has been used in the past - no kidding, it's used to login to my British Gas online account. What a shambles the migration has been / is.

mountaindreams

Since I was switched to British Gas in December last year (after my previous company went bust) I have had to contact them a number of times. I provide readings everyone month. Before the latest changes (apparently a new account my readings were showing on the reading web page but they were using different numbers on my bills which meant they were trying to charge me £150 extra - I had to use the web chat twice to get this rectified, each time the person was very helpful and sorted it out and I got a re-issued bill with the correct numbers. Who knows where they got the figure they were using from.
Now all my history has gone so imaginer its another excuse to try it on.

I recommend keeping a very close eye on your readings and bills.