Britsh Gas should be investigated by the police !

[eldersis]

PLEASE PLEASE send this viral as I am SURE there are many people affected more badly than I am.

My situation. up front. I am disabled (partiallt sighted) I am 62 and have my mum 92 living with me. I have an average work pension that means i am £.2.30 a week too RICH to get gateway benefits.

My gas boiler went kaput in march this year. Still paying the standing charge each month, In credit paying (£150 as of this morning) 50 a month for F** all standing charge.

Electric I am £459 in credit but they are still trying to increase my monthly direct debit from 150 to 180, You CAN NOT change this amount online "COMPUTER SAYS NO" !!

I have been cooking on a camping gas stove since march. ZERO gas used, but the website will only let me put in a DOUBLE sum. I have refused to do so,

I HONESTLY feel that unless you kick up a stink British gas (ie the shareholders) are quite happy to rake in the profits,

People will die !

PLEASE people. i KNOW prices are rising, i pay my debts but they are making you pay double so the big fat profits are earning THEM even more.

Please. pay your debts but refuse this racketeering. Dont accept their inflated "algorithms"

Thanks for reading this far. Sorry but this is all really wicked. Illegal and wrong.

Take care ALL

Electric have you asked for a refund of the credit. British Gas usually holds 75 of credit before you can get a refund. Do this online view payment plan refunds..At least if you get this back then just use the credit money refund to pay the extra monthly DD. If you don’t use gas definitely get it capped you will then save on standing charge for Gas..if you can’t sort it online definitely call them.

If I were you I’d do whatever you can to get your benefits below the threshold for help.

are they means tested? If so it should be doable. Fuck all the “omg benefit fraud” people - look after you and your mom

Thanks for all the responses.

Here is a bit of an update. It has taken over a week of phone calls to get to a solution I can live with but I didn't just want to post and run. Lots of little issues have been explained so sorry this may be long, but may help someone else.

To recap This is British Gas for both gas and electric..

They have recently changed their entire website and migrated all their customers to the new system. This means you cant see readings, bills etc all in one go. You have to go to different pages to see the old readings and they will only be available for 6 months, so BG CUSTOMERS GO AND DOWNLOAD THE RECORDS NOW.

Took 1hour 25mins to speak to a person,she was very nice. (thought I had got it sorted) ......read on LOL

You can not decrease your direct debit via their website
You can send a meter reading BUT if they think its too low they will not accept it.

You have to contact them by phone. The reason for this is that their computer calculates all the figures on the AVERAGE household (not previous readings) I explained I was not an average household and barely judged as normal !

Gas is 8.80 standing charge per month . before using ANY units.
My boiler packed in MONTHS ago They accepted my info and my new DD is 20 a month (with 148 in credit) I know they owe me money, but If I can get my boiler fixed soon it gives me a bit of a buffer for winter.

Electric is 15.50 standing charge per month. before using any units. I have a VERY low usage compared to others that their system couldn't cope with.

I have a fridge freezer on all the time and a washer that i use once a week. I use my laptops for music, tv. FINALLY they accepted my low usage and am actually 500 in credit.
They wanted 178 per month. I have reduced this to 100.

I KNOW that's a lot of money to be held in credit BUT with winter coming I will not have to worry about putting on a heater if its really cold, again like the gas credit its a buffer.

OF COURSE IT ALL WENT WRONG !

British gas tried to take all the old amounts out the following day.(I Had cancelled the old direct debits) lots of nasty emails. Checked online and NONE of the agreed changes had been made.

HOURS on the phone to speak to a person again who said, sorry, colleage obviously didnt know how to do it right!

So stick with it if you have to complain. You don't need a smart meter to keep monthly records, keep your own. BUT I am now taking a photo of the meter reading each month.( that was a tip from the British gas guy)

Thanks all. hope you all can find solutions if you are in a jam.

Email them asking to withdraw your credit, and then switch to a different provider. I'm with Octopus. They're lovely.

@eldersis I know it’s frustrating, but most of what you’ve said isn’t really BGs fault.

It takes a few days to change a DD, so if your payments were due to come out the next day, of course they would have been the old ones.

Your direct debit is based on historic usage, so BG didn’t know that your cooker was broken.

You only ever pay for the energy you’ve consumed so they are not thieves, you can have a credit refunded although given it’s just before winter, it might be wise to keep it.

It’s hard to get through to suppliers at the moment, because the government decided on a two schemes giving suppliers less than a months notice for one of them so they are inundated.

Energy suppliers sell energy at price below cost at present - they aren’t making fat profits on energy supply.

Make sure you get everything you are entitled to in terms of cost of living payments. Contact the British Gas Energy Saving Trust if you are struggling.

If you don’t have a large enough pension to afford the retirement that you would like then you’re going to need to work to earn some extra money.

British Gas are making very little money, around £10 per year per customer, so any talk of them breaking the law makes no sense.

Yes, energy has become very expensive, and it is making life hard, but the causes are well-known, and it’s not profiteering by the suppliers that’s behind it.