Saturday, May 21, 2022

British Gas Part 2

Sure enough, British Gas turned into a battle. Exactly as I predicted in my previous post, they went back on the deal.

The last time I'd spoken to them the agreement was that they would look at my consumption over a two week period and base my bill on the average daily usage of that period. Seemed fair, I could not disagree with that.

So the two weeks pass and I get a phone call from British Gas. Thank-you for the meter readings, we've now had readings from Neon Reef and your bill is £396.

But that wasn't what we'd agreed. Didn't matter, this is now what we, British Gas, have decided that we are doing regardless of what was put in place before. On the plus side, be grateful. We've dropped your bill by £100 so what are you complaining about? Plus you can't argue with a meter reading.

Well, yes, I can argue with it. For two reasons. First, it is still showing a usage far in excess of what I'm actually consuming. I'm getting through around 8kWh a day. Their figures show about 20.

You could damn near hear the shoulder shrug.

The second thing I argued was that Neon Reef had never had a meter reading from me. My smart meter apparently wasn't compatible with their systems and I had not had time to submit any readings to them before they went bust. So where had it come from? It was obviously an estimate based on my closing reading from PFP when I switched.

The woman from British Gas was not budging. She just repeated that the bill was the bill and the readings were the readings. Total disinterest. And why should there be any interest? It is not in their favour to get to the bottom of it or act fairly. What am I going to do? Go somewhere else?

All I could do was refuse to accept it and every time she suggested something, payment plans, credit agreements, etc., I said no. Give me a deadlock letter so I can go to the Ombudsman.

Let me speak to my supervisor about how we can help you pay.

No, just give me the deadlock letter so I can go to the Ombudsman.

Let me see if I can spread the payments over 12 months.

No, just give me the deadlock letter so I can go to the Ombudsman.

I cannot emphasise enough how important this is. If they will not accept your complaint then be stubborn. Do not back down and just keep repeating "Ombudsman".

Whatever they say.

Ombudsman.

Every suggestion.

Ombudsman. Ombudsman. Ombudsman.

If this is not going in your favour then this is what you need to be doing. Do not get bogged down in the quagmire of any utility company's complaint system because it will never go in your favour.

The Ombudsman is the independent adjudicator in energy company disagreements. All the bigger companies are signed up to them as the final word in complaints. I've used them before in similar circumstances, Iresa went bust and I got transferred to Octopus who then botched the transfer. I got nowhere with Octopus but the Ombudsman investigated, found in my favour and I ended up getting a little bit of compensation. It was actually a really smooth process, the Ombudsman service was helpful and fair. I think there are also penalties for energy companies who end up in Ombudsman cases so there is a big disincentive to let a complaint go that far.

But to get to use the Ombudsman service you either need to wait eight weeks from your original complaint or you have to receive what's called a deadlock letter from the supplier. This states that the complaint has reached a point where no agreement is possible. That is your ticket to the Ombudsman.

So I just kept repeating it over and over. Send me the deadlock letter.

And it worked. After the final call where it was agreed this is what would happen. I got another call a couple of hours later. Suddenly British Gas had decided that, in this case, they would base my bill on the average figures I had given them.

My bill had gone from the original which had been around £600 to £140 once all the various credits from PFP and Neon Reef had been added. That's almost a 75% reduction because I knew I was right and refused to give in to them.

That is absolutely sickening and makes me wonder exactly how many other people were in the same position when Neon Reef and the other companies went bust. There must be hundreds, even thousands, of people who got ridiculously high estimated bills and just paid it because they think it must be right or British Gas tried to intimidate them into paying it. It is shocking that they can be allowed to get away with this with no penalty whatsoever.

I've read theories that the reason they are doing it is that they know the overestimates will eventually have to be repaid but it nets them a huge excess of cash up front so that they can use for business operations. It is basically a line of credit that the customers are paying for. If that is true then it really is awful.

And the other thing that has not been addressed is backing out of the agreed tariff which customers of Neon Reef had been given when they were transferred over. This was supposed to have been fixed until June but they used some very sneaky wording in the fine print to wriggle out of it.

British Gas are a bunch of crooks. There is no other way of putting it. As a company it is immoral and unethical to behave in the way it has done. OK, they have arguably stayed within the limits of the law but I don't think anyone for a moment can argue that they are honest.

While we are on the subject of complaints, I've actually got two positive stories. First, my car insurance. As mentioned in a previous post, someone hit my car in February and agreed to pay for the damage. I notified my insurers of the accident, as you are required to do by law, but that I was not making any claims.

So I got my renewal and spotted that my no-claims discount had been reduced to 3 years from 10 years and my premium had been hiked up to reflect that. I got on the phone to them, the woman I spoke to was extremely helpful. The claim was removed, everything sorted and my new quote issued. Surprisingly, it is actually lower than any other quote I've had from any of the comparison sites so I will renew with them. So to counter the awful service of British Gas, here is a little bit of praise for Zenith Insurance. For once, a company that actually did their job well. It was actually a really nice experience.

The other one was Heinz. It sounds stupid but I had a bottle of tomato sauce explode in my cupboard. I heard a hissing, opened the door and saw sauce everywhere. Not happy, I posted the pic and my complaint of their FB page. I got a message asking for my name and address and now I've got £10 in supermarket vouchers. So it pays to complain.