British gas

hendipoo

Good Morning I am a British Gas customer and last month  I was in credit to the tune of  £3868.79 .When I managed to get through to BG they told me they could not refund the money and they were adamant I could not reclaim it ? This month I am paying to much for my Gas (they say) and I am in debt with my Electric (139.44 debt) how can this be and how can they keep my money ? I am a disabled widowed pensioner who is struggling to pay these bills as it is HELP!!!!

hendipoo

sorry that should say £ 868.79 !!!!

TheMilkmansDad

When was your last bill raised and what were the readings used (estimate, Smarts, manual?). When did you last submit a meter read?

Mstty

Are you billed every 6 months but pay a monthly direct debit?

Does the bill match the units used on your meter for the time period on the bill does it have an E for estimate or is it R for read or a smart meter read?

[Deleted User]

A credit/debit balance is meaningless UNLESS it is based on actual meter readings taken today. For example, you look at the site today and it shows your £868.79 credit but you haven’t been billed for 6 months and there are £900s worth of charges waiting to be applied to your account.

When did you last get a bill and what did it show in respect of a credit/debit balance? How much are you paying per month?

Alnat1

British Gas only bill you every 6 months. Between bills your account is updated with all the credits you pay in but it does not include any debits for energy used.

When the next bill is calculated with debits for gas and electricity used it over the previous 6 months, it may be that all the credit that is in your account is used up in charges. It appears this is what has just happened to you.

It might be a good time to switch your account to a supplier who will bill you monthly and you can keep track of your account much more easily. I personally recommend Octopus who are easy to contact if you do have any queries.

brewerdave

In support of the previous posters - my gas balance with EDF was showing as a credit of ~ £1000 but when they finally raised a bill today (which I have checked) I'm in debit by over £100 - someone in authority really needs to insist on monthly billing being the norm!
I was expecting this but others won't be so fortunate !

Gerry1

brewerdave said:

- someone in authority really needs to insist on monthly billing being the norm!

If only we had a competent regulator that had some clue about what they should be doing...

[Deleted User]

If consumers want monthly billing they can always switch suppliers. That said, the Licence Condition is particularly woolly:

How anyone could prove a breach of the Condition is beyond me. There are some consumers that monitor their usage/costs daily whereas others just find the whole process of energy bills completely baffling.

matt_drummer

[Deleted User] said:

If consumers want monthly billing they can always switch suppliers. That said, the Licence Condition is particularly woolly:

How anyone could prove a breach of the Condition is beyond me. There are some consumers that monitor their usage/costs daily whereas others just find the whole process of energy bills completely baffling.

I think it is quite obvious that six monthly billing is not sufficient to meet the requirements of that licence condition.

I also think it is easy to prove a breach.

In the example above, sending a statement one day showing the account is in credit by over £1,000 is misleading and is not sufficient to enable a domestic customer to understand and manage the costs. The account was actually in debit by £100 the next day.

The licence condition says nothing about needing to keep your own records or do a bit of work to find out what your balance really is.

To comply with this condition I would say that a statement needs to be produced at a frequency that matches the customer's payment frequency, monthly payments require monthly bills.

You cannot understand and manage without knowing what the true balance is.

Gerry1

matt_drummer said:

Dolor said:

If consumers want monthly billing they can always switch suppliers. That said, the Licence Condition is particularly woolly:

How anyone could prove a breach of the Condition is beyond me. There are some consumers that monitor their usage/costs daily whereas others just find the whole process of energy bills completely baffling.

To comply with this condition I would say that a statement needs to be produced at a frequency that matches the customer's payment frequency, monthly payments require monthly bills.

Absolutely.  It's obvious to everyone except dozy Ofgem that the DD and billing intervals should be exactly the same in order to avoid this widespread confusion.

Similarly, even three months is far too long: you can use unaffordable amounts of energy in that period during a cold winter, and by the time the bill finally arrives it's far too late to take effective action.  Monthly DDs must be the default.