British Gas the worst company

tim_p

wrf12345 said:

Don't know if it is the same now but some years ago, after moving into a house with BG supply, I tried to phone them to set up an account and their phone system dead-ended you unless you had an account number! I had to open a bill from them to the old owner and "borrow" that number to actually talk to someone, who was very nice about it and sorted out a new account. Parts of BG don't really know what they are doing, other bits are ok.

From reading the OP it seems very little, if any, attempt was made to contact BG after an initial attempt / phone call. This despite many bills arriving addressed to The Occupier. That in itself should have set alarm bills ringing, resulting in increased effort to sort it out with BG. They admit they couldn’t submit readings due to not having an account set up in their name. Instead it’s apparently BGs fault. 

Yana10

Hi
i don’t want to RANT. So please mind your language. 

There are many who have suffered from BG. I would like them to share their experiences. That’s what this forum is about. 

There have been many bad opinions online about BG. Which means I’m not the only one. 

Even on the pole BG has been rated as poor company. 

Therefore ombudsman seem to have a lot of dealing with it. 

I do also know public relation dept. of such organisations do have their fake accounts set up to deal with bad publicity about them. 

So some posts of this forum may be from them to put people off. Otherwise who will sit on a computer during working weekdays to send links on the forum. 

My call is to the people who have suffered from British Gas to share their experiences. 

Don’t let some of these posts to put you off.

TheElectricCow

Yana10 said:

I’m so upset about their behaviour to me as a customer. 

They both seem to think it was all ok and £150 will throw my out of their system. 

They don’t seem to realise the inconvenience they have put me through. How many times I have called them, how much I have been worried about and how much I have waited on long calls. Many times I left work early to get through BG before 5pm. 

If your only concern is their behaviour then £150 is already likely to be the most generous offer you’ll get. Hurt feelings and inconvenience may not be pleasant to deal with but they hold little monetary value. 

Unless you’re able to demonstrate that BG’s poor service has caused you undue financial loss (e.g. if they had billed you for a period when you didn’t live in the property) you’re going to have a difficult time securing a higher award.

Remember the Ombudsman isn’t a consumer rights champion and they don’t investigate complaints, their role is to look at the evidence provided by both sides and make a judgment based on that. If you feel they may have discounted an important piece of information then you might want to appeal the decision and explain why, but don’t expect any huge change in the outcome - there will still be a large bill to pay and your current offer is already on the high end of what is typically awarded for service issues.

GingerTim

'People disagree with me so they must be working for British Gas' is a pretty odd position to hold.

CouldntResist

Posting links during workday obviously means you are a shill rather than possibly being someone who happens not to be at work on that day and who also has the ability to work Google?

Now, I could post a link from the BG website which would have told you how to calculate your expected bills from your own readings. But I'm sure you've already worked out how to do it now that you realise you have to actually pay for all the power you have used and are just checking what you should have been putting aside.

BooJewels

Yana10 said:

Hi
i don’t want to RANT. So please mind your language. 

There are many who have suffered from BG. I would like them to share their experiences. That’s what this forum is about. 

There have been many bad opinions online about BG. Which means I’m not the only one. 

Even on the pole BG has been rated as poor company. 

Therefore ombudsman seem to have a lot of dealing with it. 

I do also know public relation dept. of such organisations do have their fake accounts set up to deal with bad publicity about them. 

So some posts of this forum may be from them to put people off. Otherwise who will sit on a computer during working weekdays to send links on the forum. 

My call is to the people who have suffered from British Gas to share their experiences. 

Don’t let some of these posts to put you off.

I would suggest that if you're any older than about 14 you should hang your head in shame at that post - it's silly beyond words.

I have been a customer of BG for quite a lot of years and their customer service has deteriorated immeasurably in that time - I have all sorts of problems with my bills, which seem to be formatted to cause maximum confusion - they constantly refund periods of time, then re-bill a similar period from a different estimate.  I can usually get it to balance out eventually, but each bill sucks up a couple of hours trying to figure it out.  And I'm well on top of my energy use and track and cost it out monthly for myself.  That was why I looked in, in case I could help unravel such a predicament.

I DO NOT work for BG.  It would certainly be against forum rules to do what you suggested.  Believe it or not, my posts were intended to help - I posted a link to the Ofgem Price Cap which explains how tariffs are arrived at (you said initially that they'd put you on an inflated tariff, which we've proved that you were not) and offered to work out what your bill should have been had you provided meter readings - but as you haven't, you're either not that concerned about what they're billing being correct or have already worked it out and validated it for yourself.

And the reason I have the opportunity to 'sit on a computer during working weekdays and post links' is that I'm semi-retired and currently nursing a healing broken leg, so am limited in what I can currently get up to - I simply can't manage some of the things I'd rather be doing.  Plus, as already mentioned - it was an attempt to assist you.  A brief look at mine or anyone else's posting history would very quickly put the daft idea that we work for BG to bed.

But if you only want people to post that agree with your claims, there's nothing more I can offer.

tifo

CouldntResist said:

Yes, the Ombudsman and Industry are obviously all in it together to stick it to the consumer which must be why the Ombudsman made my supplier give me £100 compensation on two separate occasions for smallish billing errors and themselves gave me £100 for poor service on the second complaint.

All Ombudsman in any industry are hand in glove with the firms they require, more so with the larger ones.

wrf12345

It is worse post EU because you could always threaten them with referral to EU regulators, such as Consumer Rights Bureau, which threat tended to get a miraculously rapid resolution to problems.

EssexHebridean

Lots of people use these forums during "your" working day OP - it certainly doesn't mean that they are in some way in cahoots with BG, or indeed any other supplier!

Your initial complaint seemed to be that BG has put you on a more expensive tariff and have now dropped your prices, so why could they not have charged you that from the start - but if you have been on the variable tariff, then it has been explained that this is simply the way energy prices have performed over that time, and the prices that you were paying were roughly in line of what everyone else on standard variable tariffs were paying at that time, so has that cleared up that question for you? 

It's really quite unusual for an energy supplier to offer as much as £150 goodwill payment in circumstances like that, and indeed, it's by no means usual for the Ombudsman to prescribe that sort of level as payable either. 

We have indeed seen lots of issues here with BG's billing - and a lot of that seems to be as a simple result of how their billing system works. Other suppliers use a more straightforward system, which may well suit you better. I would suggest taking the goodwill payment, and then taking your business elsewhere. Voting with your feet is often the best way of getting satisfaction in situations like this.

I trust that you have now turned into one of those customers who DOES keep an eye on their meter readings, and their billing? If so, then at least something good has come from this! 

dealyboy

Hi Yana (Original Poster) ... and welcome to the MSE forums  ...

Unfortunately BG are not uniquely bad and there many other horror stories that even somebody like Edgar Allen Poe would be proud of  .