British Gas Refund

JeffA

Good morning,

I transferred from British Gas to an alternative supplier in October / November 2023. 

Shortly after, I noticed that my BG account was £2,600 in credit and requested a refund from them.  Since then I have had numerous ‘chats’ with their customer team who have repeatedly promised the issue will be resolved by various given dates.  Each date has come and gone and BG still have my £2,600.

This is now logged as a complaint to try and speed up a resolution.

 BG advise there is a technical problem which is preventing a final bill from being generated.  They have advised the technical problem has been known about since 2022.  They have also advised they cannot charge for energy not billed over 12 months ago. 

MattMattMattUK

JeffA said:

Good morning,

I transferred from British Gas to an alternative supplier in October / November 2023. 

Shortly after, I noticed that my BG account was £2,600 in credit and requested a refund from them.  Since then I have had numerous ‘chats’ with their customer team who have repeatedly promised the issue will be resolved by various given dates.  Each date has come and gone and BG still have my £2,600.

This is now logged as a complaint to try and speed up a resolution.

They should be raising a final bill within 6 weeks of you leaving and then the refund after that, though the amount they have to pay you for failing that is actually quite low. A complaint at this stage is your best option, let it run it's course. It is highly likely you are not £2,600 in credit though, I suspect that is the sum of all your payments and the issue is that they are struggling to generate a bill which would go against that credit. Once that is worked through they may owe you money, or you may owe them money.
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/information-consumers/energy-advice-households/check-if-you-are-owed-money-your-energy-bill

JeffA said:

BG advise there is a technical problem which is preventing a final bill from being generated.  They have advised the technical problem has been known about since 2022.  

British Gas seem to have problems with general incompetence, as well as a particularly difficult migration of billing systems, the "technical problem", where I am not sure incompetence can be described as a technical problem has been ongoing for a lot longer than 2022.

JeffA said:

They have also advised they cannot charge for energy not billed over 12 months ago. 

It is not that simple, back billing may or may not apply, but as you have a credit it is almost certainly irrelevant anyway. 
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/information-consumers/energy-advice-households/check-energy-back-billing-rules

maisie_cat

Have you calculated what your final bill should be? if you haven't been billed for a couple of years you possibly aren't in credit at all. If you work out the missing bills yourself may find that the fight isn't worth it.