British Gas incompetence and lies

melb

Morning all please can anyone direct me to a template for a complaint to British Gas for my daughter.

She was sent a bill a few weeks ago (she pays by direct debit each month) which said she was £43 in credit.  She rang to make sure this was correct as she has previously inadvertantly run up an excess with another company and was not informed by them until she vacated her rental.

She was told on the phone that it was not correct and in fact she owed £300!  She immediately went into a spin and has been working all the hours she can on her minimum wage job.

She rang them again last week to try and set up a payment plan and was told that she did not owe and that the £43 credit was correct.

I am furious!  Imagine someone with poor mental health and no support being given that wrong information, it could send them over the edge.

I want to draft a strong complaint for compensation which I have never done before.  Does anyone have an links they would care to share?

Many thanks

TheElectricCow

I can understand how this may be frustrating, but the first step will be to figure out exactly what you hope to achieve by making the complaint. As it stands your daughter has not actually suffered any financial loss, so claiming compensation is going to be difficult.

Your only real avenue is complaining for poor service because of the mistake the customer service person had made, which ultimately may end up getting you nothing more than an apology.

It would also be a good idea to go through your daughters bills with her and compare them to her actual meter readings to work out whether the bill is actually correct or not, that way you aren’t just taking BG’s word for it and will definitely know where her account currently stands. If they’re still wrong you can then also prove this and will have a much stronger basis for complaint if that’s the route you wish to go down.

melb

good point, I was assuming the printed bill, confirmed by the second BG person, would be correct

sparky0138

melb said:

Morning all please can anyone direct me to a template for a complaint to British Gas for my daughter.

If you make your complaint through Resolver you can choose from different options why you're complaining and they provide you with a template where you can enter the details of your complaint.

TheElectricCow

melb said:

good point, I was assuming the printed bill, confirmed by the second BG person, would be correct

You would hope so, but the key thing to remember is the bill can only be as accurate as the meter readings used to produce it, and the only way to be absolutely sure those readings are correct is to actually check them against the meter itself - this isn’t something the BG person can do as they would be relying on whatever information was already used to generate that bill in the first place.

A customer service representative unfortunately may decide to say whatever they need to to get someone off the phone, and without them  seeing the meter themselves they don’t have any real ability to say with certainty whether that bill is correct or not.

If it’s a smart meter providing the readings automatically then at most they would be able to confirm whether or not they are receiving readings from the meter. While if it’s a traditional meter, the only one who can fully verify the bill’s accuracy is someone with both physical access to that meter and any prior bills received.

la531983

Oh, and sticking with a company that only bills properly every six months is asking for it. Get her to move somewhere else.