£400 for energy support not happening

marcellam

Hi. I'm british gas customer. I'm entitled to the £400 energy support but instead of getting £66 credited as it should be BG only accredited me with £35.05 which is the amount of my electricity direct debit. I phoned them and asked why didn't they use the gas amount of direct debit. They say the only take from electricity amount and they won't credit on my account the difference either. The person told me I'm entitled to have it but didn't know when and how it's going to be. What's going on? Can anybody give me clarity on that please? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you. Marcella 

bagand96

From this page: Government Support - British Gas

If you pay by fixed Direct Debit

If you pay by fixed Direct Debit we'll send the money to your bank account each month up to 10 working days after we’ve received your Direct Debit payment.

• If your Direct Debit payment is the same or more than the EBSS discount amount, the payment will be made directly into your bank account within ten days of your Direct Debit going through.
• If your Direct Debit amount is less than the EBSS payment, i.e. less than £66, you’ll receive a refund equal to your Direct Debit amount and the remaining balance will be credited to your electricity account.
• If your Direct Debit comes out very late in the month, you may get the refund early the following month. Don’t worry, you’ll still get the full £400 discount over six months
• If your Direct Debit doesn’t go through we’ll add the payment as a credit to your electricity account that month
• If you also make payments by a British Gas payment card, we may send you a voucher for your payment instead

The second bullet point seems to apply to you.  Because your electricity DD is less than £66 the balance of will be added as credit to your electricity account.  They can't take Gas into account because the Government support scheme is only being paid on electricity accounts.

macman

Deleted_User said:

What's happened is what I'd expect for somebody with separate suppliers for electricity and gas. But do you have both with BG? If you do, do you have separate DDs, and separate current credit/debit balances, for electricity and gas? Because I'd expect it to be a single DD, and single current balance, with a dual supplier.

The OP stated 'my electricity DD', so it's fairly certain that they have separate DD's for each fuel. It's very common to have 2 DD's: I was with BG until recently and, because I had different tariffs for each fuel, as a result of SoLR transfers, there were 2 DD's.

Fredw56

It’s good someone has kicked this conversation off. My daughter is caught in the same trap. She is with Scottish Power for both gas and electric but for some reason the charge her in two direct debits. To make it worse she is massively in credit because when she moved in the set her DD too high. As a single person who is notoriously parsimonious her energy consumption is very low plus her home is almost new and hence has very good insulation. Her electric DD is only £25 (remember the big credit balance) so Scottish Power are only rebating £25 and there is no sign of the rest of the government help being credited. Scottish Power told her that is all she is getting. I think this is wrong. Who is getting the extra £41? Is it going back to government or are Scottish Power taking it as extra profit? 

I think this is so unfair. Her DD payments are only that low because Scottish Power racked up such a big credit balance by over charging in the first place. 

What should the correct situation be?

QrizB

Fredw56 said:

Who is getting the extra £41? Is it going back to government or are Scottish Power taking it as extra profit? 

Neither, it should be being credited to her electricity account.