Are BG that bad?!

Supercali

My first post after lurking for quite a while :cheesy:

I am finally looking forward to changing electricity supplier (No gas as on Oil).

On all the searches British Gas are by far the cheapest but on looking at the dreadful reviews I am really concerned about changing to them!

Quentin

If you can save some money, and are prepared for the possibility (or should it be probability) of having to make 3 or 4 calls to them should you need to contact their call centre over any admin problem, then go for it.

The electricity they supply to your sockets is just the same as any one elses!

It seems to be mainly in the area of admin and their call centre that we get problems. Hopefully you might never need to contact them.

(They do supply millions of people!)

shinyhead

Hi Supercali,

My experience with BG as an energy supplier was fine until prices started going up and I decided to switch to another supplier a couple of years ago. They kept hold of me for over 3 months and tried to increase my DD by a about £25 a month even though I was hugely in credit. Finally when the meters were read for switching my gas reading was overead by a huge amount, ending up with a final bill from them of £40. After calls both to new and old suppliers and getting nowhere to get this sorted I made them wait for that for a couple of months and ended up turning the phone off due to the relentless phone calls demanding payment after as short as a couple of weeks of this bill arriving.

Been with e-on since then and no problems- and if you have to call them it's a 0800 number.

heeth

Thier customer service is appalling - they have won many awards in advice sector's for Worst customer services. It does depend on what is important to you, if a problem arises with your energy, are you happy to be on hold for at least 20 mins (paying for it) to then be a) disconnected or b) go through another 5 departments before someone knows how to deal wtih your query? If so go for the cheapest supplier, but if customer services is important to you, you might want to spend an extra few quid a year to get much better customer service. Scottish and Southern is always rated very highly on CS, but all others I would put above BG.

Why don't you test it? Ring BG gen no 0845 955 5300 and pretend you want to speak to someone about a bill query, see how long it takes?

Ken68

Better still a freephone number 0800281028

http://www.saynoto0870.com/companysearch.php

On second thoughts use Heeth's number, will hurt more.

grayhamw

Someone I know had an account with BG and had very high gas bills, they then discovered that their meter was not the type of meter that BG thought they had and therefore were being overcharged.
As such everyone should check their gas meter to find out if it is cubic meters or cubic feet and check their bill to find out what their supplier thinks they have.