British Gas - Spawn of Satan (British Gas)

Member Name: Suz_Web

Product:	British Gas
Date:	18/09/02 (410 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: erm....., ...let me think...., ....nope. can't think of any.

Disadvantages: lousy customer service., Ignorant staff., Useless.

There's a saying, well put by Kylie: 'Better the Devil You Know'.

I had been a Gas customer of BG for about 6 years and never had a single problem with them. My Electricity was provided by Powergen and I'd never had a problem with them either. Lucky? I think so.

I wanted to get both Gas and Electricity from one supplier and hopefully save myself some money. But who to choose? That dilemna was solved for me one day back in October 2001 when a very friendly (read: pushy) BG sales rep turned up on my door. I usually get rid of these cold callers on principle basically because they get on my nerves, but as he was there I thought I may as well listen to what he had to say.

After about 15 minutes waffle, and very much against my better judgement, he persuaded me that BG would be cheaper for dual fuel than Powergen. (mainly due to the no standing charge with BG).

So I signed up there and then. A couple of weeks went by and I got the paperwork through and was given a date in November for my Electricity to change to BG from Powergen.

A couple of days before the changeover, I had a call out of the blue from BG asking for my Electric meter reading. I hadn't taken note of it yet because I was planning on doing that the following day, the day before the changeover, so that it would be as accurate as possible.

The chap on the phone asked if I could give him the reading there and then. So I had to go outside to my meter and read the numbers off to him. I asked him if I should make a note of the reading to give to Powergen and he assured me that BG would deal with all of that and I was not to worry.

*First mistake on my part*
I SHOULD have taken a copy of that reading for my own records, and in hindsight it was a silly thing to not do, but in my defence, the BG chap was so reassuring that they would deal with it that I trusted him.

So that was basically that. A week or so later I r
ecieved my BG payment card (as I was on a prepayment meter for my electric) and so I stopped getting my electric cards using my Powergen card and started using my BG one.

A week later I recieved the first clue that all was not as it should be. I recieved a quarterly statement from Powergen. Although I was surprised to get a statement from them, I was quite pleased because it showed that I was £90 in credit on my account.

I called BG and asked why I had got this statement from Powergen when I wasn't with them anymore and was told that 'these things take time' and that Powergen hadn't finalized my account but it was all going through and I would soon recieve my final payout from Powergen and the account would be closed.

So I left it in their capable hands and pretty much forgot about it. Time went by and one day I got a letter from Powergen. "At last!" I thought. "This must be my £90 cheque!". Wrong. It was actually three months later by this time and instead of a nice cheque, I had another quarterly statement from Powergen, this time saying I owed them £80.

I phoned Powergen to find out what was going on and they told me that they hadn't had anything from BG and as far as they knew, I was still a Powergen customer. My £90 credit had been used up and I had worked up another £80 because I had stopped paying Powergen back in November because I had been paying BG.

Powergen was very helpful and believed what I told them and assured me that I was entitled to the £90 but I needed to get onto BG to get them to officially contact Powergen to close my account with them.

So I phoned BG. And so the fun began.

They looked on their computer systems and had no record of my starting meter reading. You remember, the one I gave to the BG chap over the phone. And the one that I hadn't taken note of.

I explained this to them but they said they couldn't close my Powe
rgen account until they had this elusive meter reading.

Then I had a flash of inspiration. When I had recieved the first quarterly statement from Powergen after I had left them, the date of the statement was the same week that I switched to BG. On that statement was a meter reading, taken by Powergen the same week that I gave the reading to BG. So I had a record of that meter reading, or something as close to it as possible. Would BG accept that reading? No they would't. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.

BG then told me that they would need to put this through to a different department and that once it had been looked into, someone would call me back. Okay I thought.

No one called me back. Ever. I called them every couple of weeks and was always told the same thing. Another department (that doesn't have a phone, obviously) were dealing with it and they would call me. And they never did.

Powergens hands were tied because they couldn't do anything without BG authorising it. So I was stuck in limbo.

In April 2002 I moved house, having still not sorted this out. My new house was supplied by Powergen so I had the issue of closing down my BG electric account. I gave them the final reading from my old house (and wrote it down too) but they told me they couldn't finalise my bill from my old property because they still had no starting reading to calculate it against. Never mind that I had paid them £150 from Nov- April and I knew that I was entitled to some of that back.

So now I had two accounts that hadn't been finalised. The Powergen one that ended in Nov 2001 and the BG one that ended in April 2002.

So many more calls to BG ensued. At one point they even denied all knowledge of me ever being an BG electric customer at my old house. So I asked them why would I have paid £150 to them over five months if I wasn't their customer. They couldn't answer that one.

Powergen
knew that I wasn't their customer during this time and they told me to call a company (can't remember the name) who would be able to tell me which company I was with. I knew full well who I was with but I phoned them and they told me it was BG. Surprise eh?

So armed with this fact I called BG again. They STILL wouldn't take responsibility for my account. So as a last resort I went to Energy Watch.

After that, things were sorted quickly. As a good will gesture, Powergen paid me the £90 because they knew that BG were just messing about. They didn't have to, but I appreciate that they did.

As for BG, they got a letter from Energy watch, and miraculously, they suddenly accepted my readings and closed my account. I recieved £45 back from them and the matter was sorted. This was in July. So all in all, it took me eight months, and endless calls and letters for them to do something they could have done in November.

I will never go near BG again. I know finally have dual fuel from Powergen and things couldn't be going better.

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