British Gas and being in credit

Cazzaroo

Hi,

Bear with me folks...

I'm new to monthly DD. My account says I'm in about £500 credit and I was told by an agent via webchat I can get a refund.  I went on to my account and it confirmed I was in credit, however I can't claim it because of having enough credit to pay for the winter season.

Is this something I can push for, even if it's a part refund because I could really do with some funds.

Thanks in advance.

Gerry1

If you're on the old BG billing system you can switch to Monthly Variable Direct Debit which should trigger a refund of your credit and result in lower bills in the summer.

However, think very carefully before choosing this option because it will result in much higher bills in the winter.

[Deleted User]

Cazzaroo said:

Hi,

Bear with me folks...

I'm new to monthly DD. My account says I'm in about £500 credit and I was told by an agent via webchat I can get a refund.  I went on to my account and it confirmed I was in credit, however I can't claim it because of having enough credit to pay for the winter season.

Is this something I can push for, even if it's a part refund because I could really do with some funds.

Thanks in advance.

A credit balance is only valid if it is based on actual meter readings and then for one day only. 

You have the right to ask for most of your credit balance back and you should not be fobbed off by CS staff who should know better than refuse to action a refund. That said, you may well find that if you get a credit refund that your monthly DD payments will increase to rebuild your credit balance before the coming Winter.

p00hsticks

You need to bear in mind that, in my experience, in BG terms 'credit' is simply how much you have paid in monthly direct debits since the last bill you received, without making any allowance for the cost of the energy you have used since then. 

A few months ago, our account was showing as being nearly £1k in credit. But this was because we were due a six-monthly bill, which in fact was for more that amount and pushed us into a (slight) debit situation. If we'd tried to get the credit refunded before then we would have ended up being faced with  a £1k+ energy bill shortly after....

victor2

It's exactly as @p00hsticks says. Your DD payments will be showing as a credit on your account, but until you get a statement (or work it out yourself), you will not know what your balance really is or at least was when the readings were taken.

Jyana

Cazzaroo said:

Hi,

Bear with me folks...

I'm new to monthly DD. My account says I'm in about £500 credit and I was told by an agent via webchat I can get a refund.  I went on to my account and it confirmed I was in credit, however I can't claim it because of having enough credit to pay for the winter season.

Is this something I can push for, even if it's a part refund because I could really do with some funds.

Thanks in advance.

I'm with British Gas and have found it's fairly easy to get a refund at any time, as long as they do an up to date bill before hand. I go through twitter as that is generally the quickest and easiest way to get a response I find. Ask them to do an up to date bill, I have a smart meter so they know the current reading, you may have to provide evidence of this if you don't have one. Then after the bill has been done, you can ask for any excess credit to be refunded back to your bank.

wrf12345

The alternative is to ask them to lower your DD so that it can take down the balance. If you are on the new account then the balance is shown after the last bill was calculated so chat just after the last bill was done (this may not be when the DD happens and the balance will increase when the DD comes in). Annoyingly, if you have credit but your bill is larger than the DD the system will generate a demand to increase the DD and you have to chat to stop that. You can increase the DD online without chat but not decrease it so arguably you could set it much lower for the summer months via chat and increase it yourself online over the winter, or just make a one-off payment to cover it.