British Gas legacy account adjustment

Ozzcat

I was transferred to British Gas fro Peoples Energy last year with £300 in credit. I get universal credit being single parent and I also work. I have had my first statement from British Gas on Friday. It says I owe £175 for legacy account adjustment with no breakdown or explanation as to where they get this figure from. They also paid my government payment of £67 pounds on 3 March on my account then refunded it back fro my account on 13 March. They told me to delete the app I used to access my account in February and so now when I access my account online there is no historical statements! What on earth do I do?
Any advice is appreciated 

[Deleted User]

Welcome to the forum. Forget BG for a moment, what credit balance (if any) was shown on your final bill from Peoples Energy? Credit balances are meaningless unless based on an actual meter reading and then for one day only.

Gerry1

BG certainly have form in this area: they billed me for several months' usage before I joined them.  They were the SoLR for Neon Reef but I had left NR long before they went bust and paid the final NR bill.  I complained but BG made the same mistake four times.

In future, always download and save every bill. Make a Subject Access Request to get copies of your old bills.

Ozzcat

Thank youDolor said:

Welcome to the forum. Forget BG for a moment, what credit balance (if any) was shown on your final bill from Peoples Energy? Credit balances are meaningless unless based on an actual meter reading and then for one day only.

Thank you I will have to go back through my emails to make sure but it was based on my final meter reading.

Ozzcat

Gerry1 said:

BG certainly have form in this area: they billed me for several months' usage before I joined them.  They were the SoLR for Neon Reef but I had left NR long before they went bust and paid the final NR bill.  I complained but BG made the same mistake four times.

In future, always download and save every bill. Make a Subject Access Request to get copies of your old bills.

Thank you. I never thought about subject access request. I am happy to pay my usage but not £175 which has come out of the blue. They seem to make things so difficult to understand.

Grizzlebeard

My only comment (from personal experience as well as several hundred threads on here) about BG's Accounting System is that it's been broken for a long time. They seem permanently stuck half way through changing it to a new system but have simply made it twice as broken without solving a single issue with the original. Communications and explanations (when they happened - seldom) might as well have been random gibberish.

(Transfered to BG when RobinHood failed, since gone to Ebico/Octopus.  I'm now a very happy person.)

Juliusmarx

Just been charged £64 for legacy account adjustment on my british gas , gas statement, can anyone explain this?  Or are we repaying the money we got knocked off last winter.

Annemos

Good afternoon Juliusmarx. Were you switched to the new BG billing system?  

I had this issue. It took THREE billing cycles for the bills to correct. Mine was rather small like yours and I hadn't noticed it until I went to the Ombudsman for something else. So I then went through my last 3 bills with a fine toothcomb!

I have both gas and electricity with them and I think this is why it is happening. 


So in my last bill on the old system 31 October 2022 (Account number starting with 8) there was a  "gas cost adjustment" given to me as a credit of 57 pounds.  But there was also an electricity charge add-on adjustment that was added on for 103 pounds in the Electricity section. Thus a net 46 pounds extra I was paying on that bill. 

Then the second bill 3 months later Jan 2023, both those amounts were reversed at the bottom of the bill . I was paid the 46 pounds back again. (New Billing system and account number starting with A). The 103 refund was shown as an account adjustment. The positive 57 pounds add-on cost was called a Legacy Adjustment. 

Then it was not until the third bill three months after that in July 2023, where I was given my old 9 pounds credit back off the old system, too.

The new System treats us like we are new customers. And they must be deciding that they want to shift some charge out of the old and into the new "company". So they are trying to match and apportion the Direct Debit amounts between the old "company" and the new "company" to get the correct offset for the actual gas and electric use between both "companies".  

My advice would be to check for that on your last bill on the old system. To see if this new one is the exact reversal. 

Also maybe in 3 months ask for another bill, to make sure you got any credit back, if necessary!