British Gas Billing Error

Annemos

tilyymolly and SAC2334. I am on Exclusive Energy Oct 2023v2. My gas rate is 4.154 perkWh. 

It was offered just to long-time customers, I think, when my old one expired. And I remember I just got in before the prices rocketed. (October 21??) It was the only time I have ever had such good fortune with money-matters!                  ======

I am also trying to sort out the BG affairs of an 80 year-old. And also a meter exchange problem for myself, both meters BG..........

I have not had a good experience with the Indian chat-line. (I think it is in India.) I used to work in India in a Processing Centre. 

We sometimes used to have the odd colleague who would say all the right things to one. But then later you would find out they had not understood and they were just being really nice and dare not say.  Prasad has a bit of that tone about him, perhaps. 

Also, my impression is ..........  that response you have had shows a complete lack of application to the actual issue you raised. It is as if that person has just cut and paste a pattern answer, which applies to a different question!! (So very annoying.) 

(A chap on that Chat-line literally just cut me off from the chat yesterday, when he couldn't understand. I was quite taken aback. I had told him the Gas Leak was repaired....so he gave me the Emergency number for a leak ??? and immediately cut me off.)

So, I have tried it about three times, but got absolutely nowhere with it. 
BG has a backlog of 100,000 complaints I was told a couple of months ago. I wonder if it has gone down or up? 

Be prepared to go the Ombudsman as soon as the 8 weeks from your Complaint is up. 

Gerry1

Annemos said:

Also, my impression is ..........  that response you have had shows a complete lack of application to the actual issue you raised. It is as if that person has just cut and paste a pattern answer, which applies to a different question!! (So very annoying.

I've always assumed that each Chat agent has a bank of huge touchscreens in front of them, one per call, and that each screen shows boxes auto-populated with the answers to umpteen FAQs.  They simply touch the box they think is the closest match to your question but there's very little real understanding.

That would also explain why it takes so long to get a response, each time you have to wait until your turn comes round again like a horse on a merry-go-round.

Annemos

And to add insult to all our injuries, look what was written on the bottom of my mail, when BG informed me I had reached the 8-week deadline .......... 


We’re sorry.

It’s taken us longer to investigate your complaint than it should have, thank you for your patience so far. Rest assured, we’re working hard in the background to give you the best response possible.

You can contact us about your complaint by live chatting with one of our friendly advisers on our website – available 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. Just click here, select the ‘Log in’ button and click on the blue ‘Chat’ button in the bottom right-hand corner.

Annemos

One more thing tilyymolly. Re the Priority Register. 

When I called the Emergency Phone Line at Cadent. The first thing they checked, was if my friend is on the Priority Register? 

Luckily I had signed her up a couple of days before. They sent out the gas-leak checker within the hour. That was probably faster because she was on that Register. 

They also inform people who are on it, in advance, if the power is going to go off. 

I highly recommend it. 

tilyymolly

Annemos said:

One more thing tilyymolly. Re the Priority Register. 

When I called the Emergency Phone Line at Cadent. The first thing they checked, was if my friend is on the Priority Register? 

Luckily I had signed her up a couple of days before. They sent out the gas-leak checker within the hour. That was probably faster because she was on that Register. 

They also inform people who are on it, in advance, if the power is going to go off. 

I highly recommend it. 

I requested she be put on the register after Gerry1 suggested I should.

The chat people do seem to be working to a script. They always ask for a photo of the meter, even though they have multiple photos of it. When I ask them to calculate the usage of a given bill, they then see it doesn’t work out.

I also now use the same tactic with the call centre. Give them the bill date and ask them to work out the kWh. It’s always three times higher than it should be.

I am now thinking I will leave it until the 8 weeks is up and bang in the complaint to the ombudsman.

Annemos

I sent a photo of my replacement gas meter to BG in January. A full size Nikon photo. With the description of the issue...... that it was replaced last October and is still not connected to my account (which is on the new system). I have since been told it has fallen through the cracks between the old and the new billing system. Because my account was changed the same week as the meter. (A coincidence.) 

April/May I received an e-mail. "Our engineers have told us that the photograph you (note the you!)  sent us, is too small. We have located the photograph you originally sent us and have forwarded it to them." So one of THEIR people, must have attached a thumbnail size photo or something, as the issue was being moved around within BG. 

Is your MIL's account starting with an 8? 


For anyone else, too, who gets in a muddle with BG. I am working on 2 Complaints for 2 different people (including mine). This is my own impression of what is going on... and it explained why I was encountering issues: 


1.  Anything that involves data on both Billing Systems has a 4 month delay, because New Billing System Teams and Old Billing System teams cannot access each others data and so a special request has to go in. (Confidentiality.) 

2.  Accounts starting with   A   are on the new Billing System.  The Indian(?) Complaint Chat line is not able to deal with anything contained on the new Billing System. Because they cannot access it. They will tell you to call the number for BG. 

3.  Accounts starting with   8   are still on the old Billing System. Indian Complaint Chat Line does try to deal with them. 

4.  I am not clear if the South Africa call Centre, deals with both Billing Systems and whether you get redirected within that Call Centre to 2 different teams. If so, I do not know how they would deal with a case that straddles both Billing Systems.

Mine does straddle both systems. I was getting so frustrated, my first Complaint disappeared!  I looked at old bills and found an old number and ended up in a UK Call Centre, who started a brand new Complaint off for me. Unfortunately, I am still trapped in Point 1 above and also because the Engineers are busy. Now at Ombudsman. 

tilyymolly

The account starts with an A. It looks as though when she was switched to the new billing system the error occurred.

tilyymolly

Update.

hi Mr Jones 

The bill does seem to have miscalculated the kilowatts by 2.83 times which is the conversion from imperial to metric.

Thank you for letting me know this and I have reported it to our faults team.

I will feed back to you once the bill has been corrected.

kind regards 

Neil Yeardley
Customer Relations 

Annemos

Gosh, maybe Mr Yea or Yeardley (or someone he knows) was monitoring this?? 

Or did you send yet another explanation to Mr Yea? 


And my case. I went to the Ombudsman just over a week ago. Then last Friday I received a phone call from BG saying they are now ready to connect my new meter to my new account. Can I please send a photo of the current reading.  (Issue has not been done since last October.)

Got off the phone and ten minutes before, the Ombudsman had mailed me saying they were taking on my case and that they had asked BG for a cassette of my dossier. 

Wonder if that was a coincidence. If so it all occurred within the space of 15 minutes. 

I hope mine soon gets done, too. 

 

tilyymolly

Annemos said:

Gosh, maybe Mr Yea or Yeardley (or someone he knows) was monitoring this?? 

Or did you send yet another explanation to Mr Yea? 


And my case. I went to the Ombudsman just over a week ago. Then last Friday I received a phone call from BG saying they are now ready to connect my new meter to my new account. Can I please send a photo of the current reading.  (Issue has not been done since last October.)

Got off the phone and ten minutes before, the Ombudsman had mailed me saying they were taking on my case and that they had asked BG for a cassette of my dossier. 

Wonder if that was a coincidence. If so it all occurred within the space of 15 minutes. 

I hope mine soon gets done, too. 

 

I gave them a specific bill and asked them to explain how 4m3 of gas equalled 127kWh.

It helped that I knew it should be 44kWh. I wonder how many other people they are being mischarged.