British Gas Price Freeze

tough_ref

isayoldchap wrote:

tough_ref
Welcome onboard.About those phone numbers.Maybe this might help some...
www.saynoto0870.com also check the unverified section.There are quite a few different numbers shown for Bg that maybe of assistance.
As for Scottish Power well done for choosing a decent tariff.Mine goes until June 2006.Are you going to get the £36 bonus?
Remember to dial 08000270055 (internet enq. section)if you need to speak to them.Don't use the 0845 number shown on their bills-unless you want to pay.

Cheers oldchap. I have used sayno on lots of occassions. There is, one problem with those at the moment. The incoming lines to the call centres for British Gas are all scewed because of the new phone system they have installed. The 01 numbers mainly all come up as engaged when you call them back.

As staff we dont even have private phones anymore! We used to have one phone per team that wasn't attached to call recording, so we could use that for personal calls. But since we moved office (the Leeds call centre) that has gone.

I have never had to contact SP for anything. And if I did, it would be by email. If I didn't get a response tho, my tapping feet would be out and on the old 0800.

Jem, The SP bill is one single bill, unlike the current British Gas (that will change later this year, with BG's new billing system, choice of single or seperate bills). You can produce your bills as often as you like, it has that option, provided it is no longer than 3 months in between bills.

I can check the paperless billing discount for you when I get back to work on Monday. PM your email address and I'll email you from work to get your details.

The comparison site offering £180 savings is a bit misleading. It is made up of a one time £15 discount for signing up online, but you wouldn't get that as you are already a customer. £15 annual Dual Fuel discount, which you already receive, 4.7% Direct Debit discount, which you already receive, £5 paperless billing discount, which you already receive. The rest of the savings comes from the amount saved being on the tracker rate. I'm so sorry you haven't received a reply in time to let you make a sensible choice based on all the available information.

The online discount it refers to is just paperless billing discount.

If anyone has anymore questions they would like me to answer, give mne a shout.

JC

Cardew

Scottish Power have announced that a German company have expressed interest in buying them. The financial press are pretty confident that the takeover will occur.

I wonder what effect that will have!

tough_ref

Cardew wrote:

Scottish Power have announced that a German company have expressed interest in buying them. The financial press are pretty confident that the takeover will occur.

I wonder what effect that will have!

That was announced a couple of weeks ago, because British Gas also expressed an interest! Altho BG are aware the monopolies & mergers, or competition or whatever they are called nowadays would stick there nose in.

The compnay involved is E.ON, the owners of Powergen. They however, would not be referred to competition/m&m because they have said they would do it under the E.ON brand, not powergen, so it would stay as Scottish Power.

So surely Centrica could do the same, Centrica buy it and retain the name Scottish Power.

British Gas is also under threat, tho ours would be a merger, not a takeover. The three companies allegedly in consideration for British Gas are Royal Dutch Shell, Norsk Energi (someone we had courted earlier this year, but then they went cold, maybe they needed another 50p in the meter!!) and Gaz de France.

Unfortunately, it looks likely that my least preferred candidate would be the successful one, Gaz de France.

Tho as I said earlier, it would be a merger, not a buy out. This is because under the terms of the demerger agreement, made and signed under the last Tory government, Centrica, the parent company of the newly formed British Gas Trading and British Gas Services (Gas supplier and maintenance and Breakdown services respectively) were only allowed to retain the name British Gas provided they retained ownership of the company.

If the company is sold, then the name British Gas would revert to the ownership of BG group, who are the company who produces the gas from the earth and ships it to shore.

An idea of a remerger was banded around last year, but that came to nothing.

Anyway, I have just been distracted by milk and a twinky thing, so I have lost my train of thought!!!

JC

Gambler

tough_ref wrote:

If anyone has anymore questions they would like me to answer, give mne a shout.

JC

Thanks for the excellent informative posts so far JC.

Just wondering with the 2010 price freeze, what happens if prices start to fall we would be stuck at the higher rate? It doesn't sound the same as 'capped'.


Thanks

jem16

tough_ref wrote:

Jem, The SP bill is one single bill, unlike the current British Gas (that will change later this year, with BG's new billing system, choice of single or seperate bills). You can produce your bills as often as you like, it has that option, provided it is no longer than 3 months in between bills.

So I will still be paying a fixed monthly amount then? I presume generating a bill will involve me entering my meter reading online as opposed to someone coming out to read the meter?

I can check the paperless billing discount for you when I get back to work on Monday. PM your email address and I'll email you from work to get your details.

I did actually get my £5 credit on each account about a week ago. This was as a result of one email that did actually get answered! I was also told that I had been re-registered to avoid the problem happening again. Strangely enough my electricity bill has now had another £5 credit in the last two days - what for I have no idea?? Do you still want to check my account?

The comparison site offering £180 savings is a bit misleading. It is made up of a one time £15 discount for signing up online, but you wouldn't get that as you are already a customer. £15 annual Dual Fuel discount, which you already receive, 4.7% Direct Debit discount, which you already receive, £5 paperless billing discount, which you already receive. The rest of the savings comes from the amount saved being on the tracker rate. I'm so sorry you haven't received a reply in time to let you make a sensible choice based on all the available information.

I feel this is the problem with the comparison sites. I have seen some that say discounts of £15 for dual fuel, £15 for online management and £5 paperless billing for each fuel making a total of £40 discounts.

The online discount it refers to is just paperless billing discount.

As I said not according to some comparison sites


Again thank you for all the info. It's a pity house.co.uk were not as helpful - they might still have a customer. Still no reply to my email.

Gambler

jem16 wrote:

Again thank you for all the info. It's a pity house.co.uk were not as helpful - they might still have a customer. Still no reply to my email.

I sent an email last week and no reply, useless !

tough_ref

Gambler

PP2010 is a fixed price not a capped, so prices will not come down if the standard prices do.

Jem16

With the eBilling from SP, you enter your readings whenever you want, they produce the bill for you. No one should come around to your house. If they do, you can let them read the meter, or not, it's up to you. But it's always nice to let them read it, after all they get paid for every meter they read, so it means they earn a little extra coin. But remember, if they do read it, you'll get a new bill produced online.

I can still check your account for you. Obviously, if you've been given the PB discount twice, I'm not going to take it off you. It's not your fault, and they you have been buggered about a bit.

I am ashamed to say I am part of house.co.uk. I have been a part of it for the last four years (since it's launch) and the management of British Gas have tried to stab house.co.uk in the back at every opportunity.

The site was managed brilliantly when it was a part of the Marketing Directorate. We answered customers emails in a matter of hours. There were no queues on the phones and customers were genuinely happy to have matters resolved quickly and efficiently.

Now days go by, work stacks up and people end up calling in to get answers! All the original management team have moved to other projects, departments or even countries because of the way people are treated by British Gas, staff and customers alike!

Gambler, and in fact anyone else who has sent an email to house.co.uk, PM me, give me your email address and I will contact you from work to try and answer/resolve your problems.

JC

jem16

Gambler wrote:

I sent an email last week and no reply, useless !

Well at least I'm not alone. :rolleyes:

jem16

tough_ref

Will pm you as you suggest.

Funnily enough today I had 3 BG engineers call round to fix my small problem of leaking radiator valves. I have 3 star cover and phoned last Sunday to organise a service call and arranged it for today (am). I later decided to make it a pm call and phoned to change it. This was done but I had a funny feeling about it as they seemed to be having difficulty in finding the arrangements I had made two hours earlier.

Anyway this morning at 8:15am an engineer phoned to say he would be there in 10 minutes. I explained about changing it to pm but said it was OK to call as I was there anyway. A young chap arrived and fixed the leaks although had to break one of the valve caps to fix one of them.

At 1:30pm another engineer called and after a confusing few seconds wondering who was calling ( at first I thought BG were phoning to persuade me to stay with them :rolleyes: ) I worked out it was for the same job. I explained what had happened and he said that was OK and blamed the computer.

At 2:30pm the bell rang and there stood another BG engineer! Anyway in he came and I explained what had happened. He didn't sound in the least surprised and said it was happening all the time at the moment. He said that they were changing over from one system ( laptop) to another system ( small handheld PDA ) and it was throwing up duplicate jobes all over the place!

So he had a look at the valves again, decided they were fine now. I then mentioned the broken cap and he replaced a couple of them with nice shiny new ones after sawing off the old rusted screws of the broken ones. He then checked the job number was the same as this morning - which it was - and left. I have to say he did a good job and put my mind at ease when he said that he preferred the old valves anyway as at least they were fixable. Most of the new stuff has to be replaced rather than fixed.

So all in all a bit of a strange day.

tough_ref

jem16 wrote:

tough_ref

Will pm you as you suggest.

Funnily enough today I had 3 BG engineers call round to fix my small problem of leaking radiator valves. I have 3 star cover and phoned last Sunday to organise a service call and arranged it for today (am). I later decided to make it a pm call and phoned to change it. This was done but I had a funny feeling about it as they seemed to be having difficulty in finding the arrangements I had made two hours earlier.

Anyway this morning at 8:15am an engineer phoned to say he would be there in 10 minutes. I explained about changing it to pm but said it was OK to call as I was there anyway. A young chap arrived and fixed the leaks although had to break one of the valve caps to fix one of them.

At 1:30pm another engineer called and after a confusing few seconds wondering who was calling ( at first I thought BG were phoning to persuade me to stay with them :rolleyes: ) I worked out it was for the same job. I explained what had happened and he said that was OK and blamed the computer.

At 2:30pm the bell rang and there stood another BG engineer! Anyway in he came and I explained what had happened. He didn't sound in the least surprised and said it was happening all the time at the moment. He said that they were changing over from one system ( laptop) to another system ( small handheld PDA ) and it was throwing up duplicate jobes all over the place!

So he had a look at the valves again, decided they were fine now. I then mentioned the broken cap and he replaced a couple of them with nice shiny new ones after sawing off the old rusted screws of the broken ones. He then checked the job number was the same as this morning - which it was - and left. I have to say he did a good job and put my mind at ease when he said that he preferred the old valves anyway as at least they were fixable. Most of the new stuff has to be replaced rather than fixed.

So all in all a bit of a strange day.

The new engineer system is wonderful, at least it will be when everywhere is using it. For obvious reasons, it wasn't rolled out across the entire country at the same time, but area by area. I think there are about two areas left to go and by that point all the problems should be sorted.

I can understand it making two jobs, but three. At least you know your monthly fee is being spent well.

One thing, please do keep in mind that British Gas Residential Energy and British Gas Home Services are two separate companies (once again). Both are owned by Centrica, but are separate.

If you need to contact them for anything, then the breakdown team are on 0845 600 5100 or engineers@house.co.uk and the membership team are on 0845 600 5090 or homecare@house.co.uk

JC