British gas

[ginger ninger]

I have in my hand a letter from "British Gas", It reads quote,
"For safety reasons, we are required by law to inspect your meter every 2 years and now urgently need to visit your property.
Unfortunate we've not been able to access your meter during our recent visits to your property and we have not hear from you despite leaving a number of cards urging you to make an appointment with us."
Then it goes on t say,
" Due to our legal obligation, we will have no option but to apply to court for authority to enter your property to carry out this essential inspection and reading. We would like to avoid this, and agree a suitable appointment with you"
I've just got of the phone to "British gas", after explaining to them I have not had any meter men call with regard to my meter, I also have not had ANY cards pushed through my letter box stating the meter people have been, and further more I do not like being threatened with COURT action when I have done nothing wrong....Mad can't describe how I felt.
So they've apologised, Saying " It was an over sight on there part and sorry for any inconvenience the letter has caused". Ok for them to say that, but what would have happened if I'd have been on holiday when the letter came....I shudder to think. Has anyone else had dealings like this ??

[OllieMartin]

Not exactly like that, but I've had plenty of dealings with my gas companies.

I used to be with EON, they used to guesstimate (and I do mean GUESStimate) my readings throughout the year. They did this so poorly that in one year they charged me £40 for gas. Being the first year of paying for gas I assumed this was correct. I left the house for Christmas with my folks, and when I got back not only did I have a bill to make up for their awful estimates of £915.15, they had also pulled it out of my account by direct debit!
I rang up, cancelled the DD, cancelled my account, claimed the money back and set up a payment scheme across 15 months of the amount.

I'm now with British Gas, and pay only on receipt of bill online. I took the online package because it made it cheaper if I submitted my own readings, but they still send someone round every 6 months to read it themselves. I know it would do someone out of a job, but the whole reason I went online is so they don't have to pay someone to come round all the time and I can benefit from that saving.

I feel all I'm doing today is ranting!

[Rhona]

We had this with TV licence people. Got a letter saying that we'd ignored their other letters, and also threatened Court action (we'd received nothing from them). Mad! - especially since our licence was paid, safely transferred to new house etc. No explanation... I think the reality is that when they're dealing with thousands and thousands of accounts, things simply go wrong sometimes, and you were the unfortunate one... they've said t'was an oversight and said sorry, just chalk it up and hope each complaint means they tighten their systems a bit more...

[OllieMartin]

I think you're right Rhona, these letters aren't sent by people, they're sent by machines hooked up to databases. If you meet some certain criteria in the database it issues a particular letter to you. Sometimes that data is just wrong, or the criteria is set up wrong and these faults are identified by customers complaining.
Would be interesting to go to court and call the machine as a witness!

[ginger ninger]

We all know the computer can only deal with the information that its programed with, and all information is programed in by someone, getting one thing wrong can be put down to bad luck.. but three things is just not good enough, obviously some numpty has lied saying they've been to my property AND posted the said card through my door, when its quit obvious they haven't...and its this that I was most mad at in the first place. I can't stand people that say they've done something ...and they haven't it makes my blood boil. That person in my eyes is responsible for the chain of events that led to me getting the letter in the first place, and sometimes SORRY is just not good enough. If I could have had this persons head on a plate..believe me, I would have.

[Hilary B]

We all know the computer can only deal with the information that its programed with, and all information is programed in by someone, getting one thing wrong can be put down to bad luck.. but three things is just not good enough, obviously some numpty has lied saying they've been to my property AND posted the said card through my door, when its quit obvious they haven't...and its this that I was most mad at in the first place. I can't stand people that say they've done something ...and they haven't it makes my blood boil. That person in my eyes is responsible for the chain of events that led to me getting the letter in the first place, and sometimes SORRY is just not good enough. If I could have had this persons head on a plate..believe me, I would have.

Actually, they might have put in the wrong address, purely by mistyping. There could be someone with an address very similar to yours who HAS done what they say.........

[Keith2202]

Yes I've had similar from British Gas. I don't think they even mentioned a court order.

One was threatening to break down my door and charge me £400 to install a meter. The reason: my bill was addressed to "the occupier" and they wanted me to phone them so they could put the bill in my name.

I then got another one saying the same thing. The reason this time, they had sent the bill now addressed to me and I paid it through internet banking as usual. I didn't know they had changed my account number so as far as they were concerned I hadn't paid the bill. They were quite happy to make no effort to return/match the money they in their suspense account though!!!

The letters were so aggressive an elderly person short of cash could easily have had a heart attack and died.
British Gas are total scum, I don't take kindly to being threatened like that and will never use them again, regardless of how expensive/inept other providers are, and I tell everyone I meet to boycott them too.

I phoned up the watchdog to complain about the letters hoping that they would reprimand them and make them change the letters to avoid killing/stressing-out innocent people.
Turns out they aren't a watchdog interested in protecting the public anymore and would only get involved if there was a dispute between us that needed resolving.

This country is disappearing down the drain fast!

[ginger ninger]

I fully agree with you Keith, If I had been an elderly person who didn't have there wits about them, the consequences could have been catastrophic..and the sad thing about this is, It will happen to the elderly, but there probably to frightened to do anything about it.

[Two_Sheds]

British Gas used to send us (1) bills for next door (1a).
Every time we had a bill I would write to them explaining that we did not live at 1a.

Finally, they sent a bill to 1B (note the capital letter B).

The postman delivered it to 18 (eighteen) because 1B does not exist. We then got a red bill for non-payment!

Utter, utter numpties.

[jackie j]

When I was at my last address over 20 years ago I kept getting letters saying I didnt have a T.V licence when I did, I kept it where I could find it easily should I need to. I kept writing telling them I did indeed have a licence. In the end I wrote to them explaining ( not nicely ) that as I lived in Teignmouth and not Bishopsteignton, as they kept insisting I did, on any communication. The letters stopped.

[shoreham_steve]

British Gas sent a bill 18 months ago saying we were over £2000 in credit ! Their so called customer services line puts you in a queue for 20 minutes then fails to sort the problem. Now we have a bill for £1100 in the shape of 6 Invoices and 4 Credit Notes which is impossible to understand. We've been trying to sort it for two weeks but the numpties on the other end of the phone couldn't care less. Now we've got a £40 late payment charge added while we're supposed to be sorting it out and we get a phone call every day from India telling us we're late paying. No one is able to understand the bill at their end, so how are we supposed to understand it?
When it's been sorted, I will change company and I will never touch British Gas again and advise anyone to do the same.

Angry of Shoreham!!

[SarzWix]

They're all as bad as each other... We're with NPower & had our gas DD put up to £150 a month in March (it was already £97) because they said we were in arrears. I spent ages on the phone trying to find out why it had to go up so much when we'd been cutting down on our gas usage, but they were adamant. Just got the new bill through, and it says we've been paying too much and are now in credit, so the payments are going down to £52 a month!
I'm not amused - if I'd wanted a savings scheme, I'd have put the money in my bank, not theirs!

[jackie j]

We were over £80 in credit with the electric and over £70 in credit with gas, they are all the same money grabbing whatsits.

[organic]

We had this with TV licence people.

A quick correction... you've had this with THE BBC!
That's exactly why they set up a separate facade to deal with licencing, as letters, threats and court action coming from "The BBC" kinda damages public image but make no mistake, it's the wasteful, politically, religiously and scientifically biased British Broadcasting Corporation that was threatening you.

That said, BBC (especially the licencing side of it), Gas and Electricity companies, HMRC... all of them are worthy of contempt.