British Gas - I want to take THEM to court - Help needed

tractorgirl1979

Hi all

I wonder if anyone can help. I am in the process of taking BG to the small claims court via MCOL to claim compensation for the time that it has taken us to get BG to sort out our complaint and so far it has currently taken them 14 months + and it is still outstanding.. To cut a long story short here is a brief paragraph re their incompetence.

"We bought a repossession in January 2007, the gas at the time was supplied by BG, because they took way too long in setting up an account in our name (not to mention we were kept on hold for an average of 45 minutes at time) we transferred everything over to EON (Powergen at the time).

We knew that we would have to pay BG some level of money as it took approximately 6-8 weeks for the switch to complete, but when the bills (minimum of 7 in as many days) started to arrive for £500 + we had had enough. We wrote to their complaints dept in May – sent recorded deliver and we received a generated reply that our complaint will be dealt within 21 days. 6 months later the bills kept coming – addressed to us and also to the occupier.

By now we were fuming, so we wrote to Sam Laidlaw the CEO of BG and advised that we wanted this dealt with within 14 days and that we wanted refunded for the telephone calls we had made plus £20 refunded – which by their own "standards" if complaints are not dealt with within 10 days of receipt this is what they credit to the corresponding account.

We received a response in November 07 confirming that the revised correct bill for 7 weeks (ish) gas was £47 less telephone credits and less £20, the CEO also agreed to wipe the bill and close the account and also promised never to contact us again.
GREAT we thought ….……No 3 weeks later we received letters from both Wescot DCA and BG solicitors demanding payment for both £47 and £502. Wescot actually laughed and apologised once we faxed over the CEO response over to them. 4 phone calls later to the BG complaints dept and they actually managed to press a button and close the account for both US and the occupier. 3 months later and they have started again BUT now the issuing of the occupier bills has a BRAND NEW account number requesting £500 +"

We have contacted EnergyWatch by Phone and email and we received a letter yesterday – but I want this matter closed once and for all.

All I want is to claim for is the time it has taken from our daily duties to communicate to BG, we have 3.45 hours of BT phone calls + 4 hours for the letters we have sent (1 hour for each letter). I calculate that as 8 hours of my annual salary which is just under £26 per hour. Also to us, this is clear harassment.

Can anyone advise on what to submit to MCOL ? Does anyone know of a Utility template available ?

Advice needed ? What about the press ?

Cheers TG xxx