British Gas account in credit

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: British Gas CREDIT.

Higher22

Having nagged my partner since I moved in 6 years ago to put our bills in joint names so I can take over the admin of them to save him the hassle, he never gets round to it so we fell into a pattern of him paying bills and me buying food etc for our family of 3 (+ cat). Recently he confessed he was actually losing sleep as the bills - primarily British Gas - have become  so steep, so I took £ from my savings to help him out.  On investigating, and it took some finding, he has now discovered that BG has accrued a sizeable credit on our account, which is sitting in its coffers and which they have not flagged up to make at all obvious - of £8000. This is great in that I assume we’ll get it back - but surely there should be a point at which credit built up should be returned/ option of paying 0/m / or such an amount be classed as “theft” rather than “credit” - or if it’s credit, why isn’t this obvious on the bill! It seems very underhand that this can even happen without it being obvious.  

Robin9

@Higher22 Can you help us with some consumption figures please -  kWh not £. 

Is this Gas and Electric ?

Are there lots of Estimated figures involved - don't assume that if you have Smart meters BG are using the readings.

Please give us the last readings and any letter A C E or our read / your read and also read the meters yourself.

p00hsticks

In my past experience. BG have indeed automatically refunded any large credit amounts they believe to be surplus when they carried out their regular reviews - I think once a year. 

Having said that, I keep a much closer watch on my monthly dd payment versus usage now so haven;t had one recently. 

One thing you do need to be aware of is that in BG terms, 'credit' refers to all the payments you have made since they last billed you, and does not include any deductions for usage since that last bill. So if your last bill was six months ago and you've been paying £150 a month, it will say that you are £900 in credit, but if you've been using £200 worth of energy a month then when the bill arrives it will wipe out all that credit, say you are £300 in debt and probably increase your monthly direct debit to both cover the deficit and meet future usage, perhaps to around £250 a month. 


     

Robswife

My credit is £5800 and all I get told is ‘wait for your bill’ !!!! They can’t tell me when my bill will be produced and why I haven’t had a bill since January and then yesterday I looked at my USAGE and nearly collapsed - my usual ‘winter’ bills are about £60 (only have gas for heating and hot water) per month but are suddenly £500 a month - some proper dodgy stuff appears to be going on at BG with accounts and smart meters 

BarelySentientAI

Robswife said:

My credit is £5800 and all I get told is ‘wait for your bill’ !!!! They can’t tell me when my bill will be produced and why I haven’t had a bill since January and then yesterday I looked at my USAGE and nearly collapsed - my usual ‘winter’ bills are about £60 (only have gas for heating and hot water) per month but are suddenly £500 a month - some proper dodgy stuff appears to be going on at BG with accounts and smart meters 

More likely that your "usual" £60 bills were based on underestimated readings and/or lower unit prices in the past.  Do you disagree with the meter readings?

BG are having problems at the moment with shifting people between old and new computer systems, which is making producing bills extremely slow - that's why they can't tell you when it will arrive - but legally they only have to give you a bill twice a year.

They're in a mess, but it's not dodgy.

kjjohns22

Robswife said:

My credit is £5800 and all I get told is ‘wait for your bill’ !!!! They can’t tell me when my bill will be produced and why I haven’t had a bill since January and then yesterday I looked at my USAGE and nearly collapsed - my usual ‘winter’ bills are about £60 (only have gas for heating and hot water) per month but are suddenly £500 a month - some proper dodgy stuff appears to be going on at BG with accounts and smart meters 

I have noted that the energy usage part of the BG website seems to have gone off the rails. It has been fine for me for the last few months but this weekend the gas usage cost (not kWh) is out of whack. The unit cost per kWh seems to be being based on around 27p rather than the correct tariff unit cost of 5.95p.

My bill was last made up at the end of January with the right unit costs for the time but if I now go back on website to look at passed usage and cost all the gas costs are wrong.