to lie to british gas?

[snowedinwithJjandtheBean]

i am getting seriously pissed off now,

DP is in the building trade so work for the past year has been all over the place, anyway we couldn't afford a quarterly bill so i rang and asked for advice, lovely lady on the phone offers us a prepayment meter and we have £4 a week removed from our 'top up' brilliant i think, we can manage that, anyway since then the debt was cleared dp worked for several months and we were back on our feet and saving like crazy people for the next redundancy hed have slapped on him, all the while asking BG if we could please come of PP meter and go back to quarterly bills, each call we were told to wait for a letter confirming, that letter never came.

Then in November dp joined the masses and had to sign on again as his hours were slashed to 10 a week, we decided maybe it was best to stay PP after all and ignored the fact wed never received a letter.

Anyway, now we top up £15 a week to get us through, just, we cant afford more than that. And in the past few weeks over and over weve had bizarre amounts taken from our credit, ie, top up £20, only left with £3.20? top up £10 left with £7, then we top up £15 left with 70p.
British gas are being no help claiming we still owe them despite a letter 2mnths ago saying its done, we keep making calls and writing letters and we simply cant keep throwing money away like that, and it is far far to cold for no gas as dcs are both under 2. ALL bills except rent and sky are in dps name.

SO AIBU to ring British gas and say DP has left me and i need BG turned over to me and to sort the debt with him?

EON are excellent at not putting up your monthly payments when you KNOW you need to pay more - and letting you run up £100's of debt before demanding it all back in one go.

And - if you should change supplier and have a debt with them their repayment terms are shite.

Example.

H had a debt of £600 with N-power (closed account so not growing) - after a little negotiations they agreed to monthly repayments of £10 a month, and sent us a payment card so that we could pay off extra at any time we wanted.

Eon - when I moved back in here (same time as H's N-power account stopped) I had £330 of charges (a quarterly bill) outstanding. H had already got the EON account set up here, so we've continued using his account, so already paying money to them.

After hours of negotiations they finally agreed to a minimum payment of £30 a month.....

Yes ok - N-power will take much longer to pay off..........but it was what we could afford, EON forced us to give them the highest payment amount that we've been paying to any of the other creditors bar the (MUCH larger) bank loan......

If you know that you need to pay more then shouldn't you put some money aside so that you have it when the bill comes through the door?

oh it's long story with that - we didn't have extra money to be putting aside (was a couple of years ago this) - were up to our eyeballs in other debts as well (somethings never change). They kept telling us that it would "even out" in the summer, and it usually did (just about). The long and the short of it was

Direct Debits went out
what was left was what we had to feed us on for that month (at that point in time anything from £50-£150 a month left)

We tried to pay "bits" off when we did have some extra cash - and they refused ) some of the payments we offered over the phone.

Then a bit later when we were a little more sorted out financially they tried to force a PP meter onto us.....telling us that it would be cheaper for us......except the amount they said we'd need to pay each week worked out £60 a month MORE than we could afford to pay towards the ongoing bills and the debt.

They did eventually back down, but it was very VERY hard work.

And with my (none overdue!) quarterly bill earlier this year they wouldn't shift an inch on the repayments.

Take,

sky isnt just tv, which not thats its any of your business costs a few pounds as we cant receive freeview in this godforsakenhellhole, and sorry but somedays i need cebeebies, so shoot me, its ALSO my land line rental, calls and broadband which i need for the voluntary work i do oh and to order the food shop so i dont have to pay for the car to go back on the road.

SO do not judge me before you know the facts.

And at NO point have i said we have no heating, we just cant afford to have it on constant which we would usually at this time of year, our house is old, no double glazing and ill doubt any other insulation so the heat just pisses out the windows. We have turned all of the radiators off except the kids rooms so we can heat them up all night for them.

I came here for advice, i cut my cloth accordingly if you have nothing helpful to contribute, dont bother.

Gah theres always a nasty one.

You need heating though dear, it's freezing.

Do you keep using the emergency credit? It takes a payment towards your bill, then clears this off before it credits your meter.

why the fuck did i just bother to justify myself!

anyway, to the help MNers DP has been on the laptop a while and it seems eon would be best for us, we will make some calls and see, we only have 5weeks left here anyway then we pay FIL X amount a month and he deals with bills, as we are renting his old house, fingers crossed that will make an easier more organised life for us!

YANBU to lie to BG they are f*ckers of the highest order.

When I moved into my last home they didn't bill me for two years I wrote them 26 letters (I kid you not) begging for them to set up a DD and bill me.

When they did it was so wrong it was laughable.

I am now in the postion where I owe them 400 pounds but they wont accept a part payment. I offer to pay 200 and they say no. They maintain that they want the whole lot or nothing.

When I last tried to make a payment over the phone they refused to take it and when I told customer services they were being ridiculous as I was living abroad and therefore no skin off my nose if I simply left the debt she told me they would "send someone to track me down and make me pay"

They are absurd. I moved into a flat which had been empty for ages to registered as a business address by landlord. They changed the name on the account to mine but kept it as a business account and sent bills to the landlord's business address. I called them after a couple of months to find out where my bills were and they sent them to me - but refused to take me off a business tariff (which has a big standing charge) for ages. I refused to pay a penny until I got the correct bill which I did after 7 months of living there. Ridiculous.

Oh no!! We are having problems with E On from the last flat we lived in. We were on a meter and later on (months after we moved) we found out we were having trouble getting credit as we apparently had an outstanding bill for E On, we had never been in arrears or anything on our meter so I really have no idea what they are on about.

They passed it on to debt collectors who are quite nasty and we sent loads of info to them to say there is nothing in the terms and conditons about a bill (they are also trying to charge us for about 7 months when we didn't live there, even though we told them we were moving and gave them the dates). It has really put me off ever going to E On again. Saying that, we are currently with BG and haven'y had a problem but one flat we had Scottish Power for a few years and they were cheap and we never had aby problems with them. Also if you go through Quidco, you may get cashback.

If you try to switch suppliers you will likely have to pay off the rest of your debt to British Gas before doing so (am assuming you're in debt to them as the prepayment meter is taking off debt from your top-ups). There is some provision for switching with a debt to a new supplier when you are on a prepayment meter but it is really difficult in practice.

If you cannot afford the weekly repayment rate of debt taken off your prepayment meter contact Consumer Direct on the 0845 number someone has already given. They will either give you advice about how to negotiate with British Gas to get your debt repayment rate reduced to something you can better afford OR they will pass you to the Extra Help Unit at Consumer Focus. The Extra Help Unit will take up a complaint with British Gas on your behalf. They've taken over the role of energywatch, the old consumer watchdog, and help who need some extra assistance dealing with the energy companies.

Energy suppliers have to negotiate a debt repayment rate that their customers can afford - it is a rule that must be adhered to. If your situation changes, such as yours has, you can renegotiate the repayment rate to something you can now afford.

There isn't much point in calling Ofgem, the industry regulator, as they don't deal directly with complaints. Ofgem is likely to tell you to call Consumer Direct. Both Consumer Direct and the Extra Help Unit pass on evidence of problems people are having with their energy companies to Ofgem for investigations / monitoring purposes so it is worth calling those organisations.

BTW if you are moving in with your parents in law who live in a pub (assume they run it?). They will be business customers of their energy supplier and the rules for repayment of debt are different - much harsher. However, if you still owe money to British Gas after your move you still pay it back as a household customer and only pay what you can afford.

Forgot to say - there is a chance you debt repayment rate on your meter has not been updated by British Gas (aka sloppy record keeping on their end) Problems do happen and it could be that British Gas has ballsed up your account so that you are now free of debt and they're still taking it or you're still in debt and they're telling you otherwise. You need to demand to have your account investigated to get to the bottom of things and find out your true situation.

snowedin if your meter is taking for debt you will be able to check this yourself on your meter. insert the key into meter and press the settings or display button.

write down what each of the screens say. screens r, s and t will tell you what the debt is any standing charge and debt rec rate,

if you are moving in to inlaws place they can keep account in their name and you pay them direct. quite a few landlords do this.

i work for a utilities company in a prepayment dept. so any other questions feel free to ask.

You can change while you owe BG - we did! Like you, we didn't actually owe them, but htey insisted we did. Eventually they gave in, and gave us a £50 for inconvenience! (DH is good at getting money out of organisations like this!)

oh thanks just1moreplease! Dp is going to look now!

Well we planned to ring eon Bg etc today but the BLARDY builders behind us took the power out again, it took us quite some time to realise it was them so we are at mums, huge fire going so nice and toasty!

Cupcake

In laws are moving into the pub they run, we are moving into there house so they dont have to sell it so normal gas bill i assume,

we did make time to see cab and the bloke said to move settle and let companys find us, this isnt something i want, new house new start imo, which means we are in charge of our debts not angry people who push buttons!