Terrible British Gas Service - faulty invoicing system

EalingMan

Hello,
My 84 Mum has had massive billing issues with British Gas. I have picked up the case for her and it has been ongoing for over 16 months now. I got the Energy Ombudsman involved 9 months ago.
Long story short:
- Her bill went from being in credit, to rapidly rising to thousands of pounds.
- No logic to the invoices, often several arrived at once with different values.
- This all happened as they moved her onto their new billing system and changed her account number.
- Hours and hours spent on the phone and with useless chat bots
- Multiple promises of issuing corrected bills that were never issued
- Logged a formal complaint 16 months ago
- The person assigned never answers emails, just ignores us.
- Escalated to the Ombudsman 9 months ago
- They said it all looked in order but could not provide their calculations
- I asked for a meter test
- Multiple failed turn ups for the meter test
- Multiple threatening legal letters from their collections team and a third party legal company.
- Eventually they turned up tested it and found it was faulty
- More promises of corrected bills but still chasing with the Ombudsman
- They somehow reported a debt and her credit rating has been massively impacted, despite her never signing any credit agreement with British Gas - is this even legal?


My Mum is happy to pay for any energy she has used but not for crazy random invoices.
The stress, especially the legal threats, has made my Mum very ill. She needed heart procedures at the worst part. Life for her is difficult enough caring for her husband with late stage alzheimer's. But British Gas does not care and frankly the Ombudsman is totally useless.

Usually when a customer experiences multiple failures and shocking poor service from a provider they are one of many.

Has anyone else had similar experiences??

Thanks.

Gerry1

Was she with a supplier that failed and British Gas became the Supplier of Last Resort?  British Gas certainly do have form in this area.  The SoLR list includes Together Energy, Neon Reef, Social Energy Supply, Zebra Power, Bluegreen Energy, People's Energy, PFP Energy and Simplicity Energy.

I was with Neon Reef and left them fully paid up long before they went bust and BG became the SoLR.  But when they switched to their new billing system BG quietly billed me for kWh usage and standing charges already paid to a different supplier for a few months before I joined BG.  They didn't tell me they'd done this, the only well-hidden clue was a revised bill that showed a much earlier start date.  They had deleted all previous bills, so it was fortunate that I'd kept copies, otherwise I probably wouldn't have noticed, let alone been able to prove BG's overcharging.  Eventually they provided a refund, only for the same mistake to keep recurring about four times !

They admitted that they couldn't stop their billing computer making the same mistake over and over again, so they had to make a one-off payment equal to the overcharges.  I'd spent umpteen frustrating hours on emails and phone calls, one of which wasn't answered by a human after two hours and others were cut off, so I persisted in asking for £100 compo to which they reluctantly agreed.

• Sounds like a double whammy - hopeless transition to the new billing system (which affected many users) plus a dodgy meter as well.
  
• You used to be able to see the old bills by going to their website and looking at the old billing system; I don't know whether that's still possible.  If necessary make a Subject Access Request to get any missing information.
• Make sure your mum is on the Priority Services Register.
• Please remember to come back and tell us the result.