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British Gas - only bill....
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Hey, I'm new to this so apologies for any forum faux pas.
We moved house mid Dec 2006 to a house that was currently on a pre payment gas meter. We requested for this to be changed and in Jan it was changed to an ordinary meter system.
However, the helpful contractor that fitted our meter failed to inform British Gas that they had completed the changeover and set our meter reading at 00000 for them to begin the charging process.
After a couple of months we realised we had not had a gas bill and called them to inform them, we were advised a bill would be sent out. This bill never materialised, we have called BG a number of times over the past year to request a bill and only after my husband spent over an hour talking to 4 different people in as many different departments did it come to light that they did not have it recorded as having changed meter.
Anyway, cut long story short we have eventually had a bill, after 13 months and they are requesting £502.57 (+ VAT) which as an annual amount spent i'm not complaining about, they have offered compensation of £97.90 which they have knocked off bill leaving us to pay £429.79.
We do not have this amount of money, they have offered to add this to DD leaving us to pay over £80 a month for the next year, this is steep on our tight budget. We have been told by a couple of different sources that if they do not bill you for a year then they are not able to charge you for it. We have looked for more information on this on the internet but have hit a brick wall.
Can anyone offer any advice or help on this matter please?
We moved house mid Dec 2006 to a house that was currently on a pre payment gas meter. We requested for this to be changed and in Jan it was changed to an ordinary meter system.
However, the helpful contractor that fitted our meter failed to inform British Gas that they had completed the changeover and set our meter reading at 00000 for them to begin the charging process.
After a couple of months we realised we had not had a gas bill and called them to inform them, we were advised a bill would be sent out. This bill never materialised, we have called BG a number of times over the past year to request a bill and only after my husband spent over an hour talking to 4 different people in as many different departments did it come to light that they did not have it recorded as having changed meter.
Anyway, cut long story short we have eventually had a bill, after 13 months and they are requesting £502.57 (+ VAT) which as an annual amount spent i'm not complaining about, they have offered compensation of £97.90 which they have knocked off bill leaving us to pay £429.79.
We do not have this amount of money, they have offered to add this to DD leaving us to pay over £80 a month for the next year, this is steep on our tight budget. We have been told by a couple of different sources that if they do not bill you for a year then they are not able to charge you for it. We have looked for more information on this on the internet but have hit a brick wall.
Can anyone offer any advice or help on this matter please?
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Comments
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Welcome to the forum
They can only go back 12 months with their billing if you haven't received a bill. e.g. had you moved into a house in Dec 2005 and you got a bill in Dec 07 you could only be billed back to Dec 2006. The irony iis that if you hadn't chased the matter you might have got away with a lot more - who says honesty pays!
So in your case that ruling isn't much help, and I am not sure if it even applies when you change from pre-pay to credit meters.
You might negotiate a slightly bigger discount, but IMO BG have been fair.0
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