British Gas

Hucky

I bought a property last July and the day I purchased it I read the Gas and Electric meters and phoned the readings in. My problem is with the British Gas. The connection had been capped before the property was put up for sale, therefore I have not used any gas. I have only used a little electric as I have never lived in the property it is still empty.

I keep receiving gas bills and every time one comes I phone them up and explain it had been capped and I have never used any gas. However the bills keep arriving and I have phoned them up at least 5 times now. I seem to be getting knowhere. I also received a letter from a company which mentioned it may affect my credit record. Although I have done nothing wrong. I phoned this company up and explained and I have not heard from them since. Although British gas say everytime on the phone they will sort it out, they continue to send the bills. It is costing me in phone calls every time just to keep telling them the same story. Can anyone please advise me what to do next.

darkcloudi

Contact Energywatch and they will deal with your complaint.

When I got the keys to my home I decided to move to a different Energy provider but experienced difficulties from BG too they were the current providers but the bills were being addressed to the occupier. I never used any gas although a little electric was used like yourself as I did not move in to the premises officially as it required work.

I was receiving continous letters and then got a letter from a debt collection agency. Now to prove that the debt is not yours and you only moved into the address recently you can provide them with a letter from your solicitor or some form of mortgage letter this is what I did and it stopped any contact from the debt collection agency. British Gas will continue to be a headache as that is what I had found so I went through energywatch and they resolved it with them.

You should get compensated for your phone calls as that's what I got back when I contacted energywatch.

Hucky

Many thanks for your help. I will get onto Energy Watch.

Cardew

Yes stop ringing and write to them.

When you ring you get a different call centre operator who are not interested in sorting out problems - they need to handle lots of calls, so time-consuming problems don't interest them.

SwanJon

They have to send you bills/statements every 3 months.
If they are unable to get readings, the system will estimate them.
Have you given them readings when you phoned in.
If you really don't want bills, get the meters taken out.

Hucky

Since I began telephoning them they send a bill at least once a month that says (this is a replacement bill) I phoned in the readings when I bought the property on 30 July 2007 which still remains empty. I give them the reading every time I phone and I explain that I have never used any gas and couldn't even if i wanted to. The property was empty when I bought it and had been since October 2006 which was probably when the previous owner had the gas connection capped. It looks like I will have to write to British Gas and also to Energy Watch.