British Gas electricity customers beware !

nobby1963

pochase said:

There will winners and losers, and it does not matter if the price increases or decreases, those who win at a price increase would lose at the decrease and the other way around.

The way you describe it you got the credit to make up more than your loss for the higher cost of 5KWh, about 35p.

So what did you complaint to the Ombudsman for? What was your expectation they should/could do. You can only contact them for your own case, not for other people.

Hi,
I complained in the hope that the Ombudsman would see what I see, BG have deliberately misled me by stating that they can get an accurate meter reading for the price change point.
I hoped that they would see it that way and take them to task over it.
I think that many other customers would take them at face value and believe that the reading on their bills will be an accurate one, however because of the BG billing interval the likelihood of customers knowing is low.
I thought I was doing the right thing by bringing it to their attention.
I was able to do this as a personal case but highlighting it as an issue that must affect many others too.
Yes it was a small amount for me but we aren’t big electric users due to us having solar panels and being very careful about our usage.
I think it’s reasonable to assume that the potential over charge for others may be much higher and then the sums when multiplied by the number of customers can soon be considerable amounts.
It seems that the consensus is probably not what I thought here too, it does surprise me but I can assure everyone I was just trying to help others be aware of the situation.
Cheers again
Nobby.

lopsyfa

I also don't think British gas has done anything wrong in this case. The difference is probably due to the time the smart meter reading was taking on the cutoff day - not exactly at midnight and they have immediately compensated for more than the loss.

nobby1963

maisie_cat said:

We transferred from NR to BG and have had no problems, the difference being that we don't have a smart meter and I give them meter readings monthly as a minimum.
My end of October meter readings were estimated out by a few kWh as well, I suspect that most people are caught in a tiny monetary amount of swings and roundabouts at tariff change. 

Hi Maisie,
 I’m glad you had a trouble free experience but maybe you might have forgotten when we first got transferred to BG I think we were all put on a ‘ welcome to BG ‘ tariff. It was obviously much more expensive than the Neon Reef price, but we were told that it was a fixed price for, I think 6 months ( from memory ). 

Personally I had many issues, getting through on the phone, 45 minutes waiting mostly when this first happened, getting through to South Africa to be told they couldn’t give the price we were paying per unit, couldn’t give me any details etc.
Eventually we got an account number and online access and eventually a DD set up.
Our tariff showed online as having an end date corresponding with the 6 month period but when the energy market started to move up, BG put all our prices up even though we still had months left on our tariff price period.
BG got away with it because of the small print in their T&C’s.
There were many many others complaining at the time.
Cheers
Nobby.

brewerdave

nobby1963 said:

Our tariff showed online as having an end date corresponding with the 6 month period but when the energy market started to move up, BG put all our prices up even though we still had months left on our tariff price period.
BG got away with it because of the small print in their T&C’s.
There were many many others complaining at the time.
Cheers
Nobby.

Some BG customers achieved "compensation" payments when complaining directly re the misinformation ,some took their complaints to the Ombudsman and were awarded various sums, and a further (very lucky) group managed to get transferred onto a better fixed tariff ,in theory, no longer available.
What annoyed me most,  was this huge variety of solutions - always felt that BG should have come clean and offered everybody the opportunity of a fixed tariff.

pallyman

I have had lots of problems with BG electric since i was transferred from NR & will move at some stage,i was one of those who got some cash of them,£100,but would have loved to have got the backdated deal.Strangely i was already with BG gas & have never had a problem with them.

nobby1963

Yes, I complained and got an offer as a ‘ gesture of goodwill ‘ from BG but it was no way enough to compensate for the difference between the new higher rate vs the rate that we were told we would have for the six months after being transferred to BG.
I became aware of some customers receiving higher compensation and even being left on the lower rate as we were supposed to be.
Again I was dealing with BG executive office by that time and was told by one member that I could stay on the rate as it had been accepted by BG that we had been told on transfer from NR that we would be.
She went away and came back to me saying that she had checked with her manager and unfortunately she had got it wrong and it was no longer an option.
The whole thing was not handled well at all.
As I have said already, my post has not received the reaction from most others that I expected so I guess I am expecting too much in thinking this scenario shouldn’t have happened.
Cheers
Nobby.

t0rt0ise

I don't understand why people stay with British Gas. Why not simply move to another supplier? I was moved to them as SoLR and moved away as soon as I could. They never did bill me for the electricity used between the old company going bust and BG setting up my account so they don't always make money out of their mistakes.

BooJewels

I'm only staying with them @t0rt0ise because I'm Attorney for my aunt and her dual fuel account is joined in with mine at the moment and I don't trust them to extricate the accounts properly.  Whilst I've had no end of problems recently, I've been with them a long time and they've only gone off the rails recently - and I was on a very good fix until last summer.

EssexHebridean

[Deleted User] said:

nobby1963 said:

MWT said:

nobby1963 said:

I don’t know how many BG electricity customers there are but if there’s a few thousand or hundreds of thousands like me then BG did well out of the last price increase based on inaccurate readings being used !

As the Ombudsman said, they will have lost as much as they gained in all probability so doubt they are significantly profiting from this sort of thing...

Hi,
I wish I could agree with you but I’m afraid I don’t, my real point is that BG have consciously misled me and others into believing that they would use an accurate reading from my smart meter, in reality they took a meter reading from a third party company, taken at some random point in time.
The reality is that probably they wanted to stop their servers and phone lines from getting clogged up.
I just can’t believe that such a deception on this scale has been allowed to go unchallenged.
Cheers
Nobby.

FWiW, Octopus uses a third-party to access the DCC Network. TMA/CGI provides the network access using its approved secure Adapter software. All suppliers use data collectors such as TMA; Morrisons; Lowri Beck ….

If I remember rightly, in latter years, meter readers were also employed by third party companies?