Bills from British Gas even though I’m not a customer

hummingbird_173

In the flat I rented for the last three years, I was a customer of Bulb (same as previous tenants) then moved to Octopus. We have electricity pre-payment meters. This year British Gas started sending bills for gas and electricity addressed to my name and my address but without the flat number. They even sent a threatening debt collection letter. I have phoned them over 10 times and raised a formal complaint in April, but have not heard anything back. Each time I phone I’m passed around, sometimes to the complaints team who say they’ll phone me back (they don’t) or the ‘classic billing’ team which seems to be the system where the error has occurred. They never deny that the bills are an error, and have told me they’ve fixed the issue.

Now it’s showing up on my credit report as a debt which is impacting my score. I raised another complaint this month but I don't want to wait that long for a response again. Any suggestions about what to do? I can’t get through to anyone in their customer service that actually fixes the issue, it’s so frustrating and time consuming. I’ve now moved out of the property so can’t see if they’re still sending me bills.

Brie

Go through the complaint process one last time keeping track of all correspondence and calls and promises to call.  And then when nothing gets done send it off to Ofgem to see if that helps.  

MeteredOut

Brie said:

Go through the complaint process one last time keeping track of all correspondence and calls and promises to call.  And then when nothing gets done send it off to Ofgem Energy Ombudsman to see if that helps.  

As above.

Highlight the need for your credit report to be corrected. I hope you've already contacted the credit agency to notify them of the mistake so that can mark that on your account.

You should get a few £ for your inconvenience, unless you can show the credit report mistake has cost you financially, in which case claim for that too.

FreeBear

Brie said:

Go through the complaint process one last time keeping track of all correspondence and calls and promises to call.  And then when nothing gets done send it off to Ofgem Energy Ombudsman to see if that helps.  

A formal complaint was raised back in April, So the eight week wait that the EO requires is up. Personally, I'd not bother with raising yet another complaint with BG (they've had more than enough time to sort it out), just go straight to the EO.