British Gas not processing £66 refund

Midas

Still no sign of my October payment from British Gas either. They took the direct debits (gas and elec) and 5 October, but no sign of the promised £66 as of yet. I spoke to them today and they claimed that my account is being 'migrated' to 'a new platform' which they are calling NEP - 'the New Energy Platform' (no idea why they are doing this) and that this is causing technical issues. Very polite chap on the phone reassured me that I will receive both the Oct and Nov payments in November... although he couldn't say when of course. All he could see on the account was a note saying that they'd tried to make the payment but a technical issue had caused it to fail. I will be amazed if I see any of the money this side of Christmas. 

MattMattMattUK

Midas said:

Still no sign of my October payment from British Gas either. They took the direct debits (gas and elec) and 5 October, but no sign of the promised £66 as of yet. I spoke to them today and they claimed that my account is being 'migrated' to 'a new platform' which they are calling NEP - 'the New Energy Platform' (no idea why they are doing this) and that this is causing technical issues. Very polite chap on the phone reassured me that I will receive both the Oct and Nov payments in November... although he couldn't say when of course. All he could see on the account was a note saying that they'd tried to make the payment but a technical issue had caused it to fail. I will be amazed if I see any of the money this side of Christmas. 

The old system was/is decades old and lacks flexibility and modern features. The system that they are moving to is Octopus's Kracken system, under a licensing deal, which is a modern, flexible system with future proofed, especially for ToU in the future.

Shedman

MattMattMattUK said:

sarahmichael0812 said:

I am still waiting. I have raised a complaint but no response. I have now paid my November DD. Last time I rang I was told I would have it by 31 October, got that sent in a text message. Hasn’t happened. Most useless customer service I have ever encountered. They just do not care. I am now at a loss as to what to do next.

You wait it out. The energy providers are trying to sort out these issues, but they take time. They were asked to implement a process at short notice, into a system that was never designed for it, the fact that it has worked with so few issues is in many ways remarkable and that there are some issues is to be expected. The payments will all get through in the end, some will just end up being delayed. 

The issue I have with that is that, in my instance (on a variable DD), all they have to do is apply a known amount as a credit at the beginning of a month as they are not refunding to the likes of us but just applying a credit and then taking it from next monthly bill (as per their own factsheet).  They have managed it successfully for two months on my stepdaughters account (same circumstances of variable DD) i.e. this month was showing the £66 credit yesterday.   

They have had 5-6 weeks (if not more) to implement it and its not rocket science.  But instead they come out with all sorts of spurious reasons for why it hasn't been applied. 

doesntnotcompute

Perhaps their systems are so old that it just takes ages. When the government uprate legacy benefits it apparently takes months and they can only do it in down time on evenings and weekends, which is why the uprating figures are 6 months out of date by the time they're applied in April every year.

Alnat1

It might depend if your account is on the old or the new system. Different problems on each maybe?

Shedman

Finally had £66 credited to my account yesterday.  Of course, no indication of whether its October's late or its actually November's actioned on time (I suspect knowing BG it'll be the former).  Let's see if they can produce my bill on time this month as well but I won't hold my breath.