British Gas massive bill - can I take it further?

[lexis200]

Hi

Right then, just to add to the rubbish that BG seem to be inflicting on tons of people here, I'll add my little story.

When we were in our old house (2 bed bungalow), we were very careful (and still are) about the amount of gas/leccy we used. We had a couple of normal gas bills, then in March last year (so obviously the cold period Dec-Mar when we were expecting an increased bill), we had a bill for £450. Now we thought there's obviously been a mistake, so phoned to query it. Unsurprisingly, they were singularly unhelpful and refused to admit even the possibility of an error. It didn't matter that the house wasn't that big, the cooker was electric and the heating was only on in 3 rooms for a couple of hours a day. It was also not noticed that our bill for the previous winter was massively smaller.

We then phoned another couple of times and got the same answer, and finally admitted defeat. We told them we couldn't possibly pay that in one go, so had to pay in instalments. So far we've given them about half the full amount.

The thing is, we checked the meter, and the numbers correspond to what they said. There is however no way we used that amount of gas in a 3 month period so my thinking was either we'd been charged the wrong way (either cubic feet or cubic meters, whichever works out to support this theory), or that there was an issue with the meter itself. Or of course they were just talking out of their bottoms, but obviously I wouldn't be suggesting that could happen

We have since moved from there, and are now in a 3 bed house rather than a 2 bed bungalow. We changed suppliers as, oddly, we were not feeling terribly loyal to BG now, and had pretty much the same tariff - although in the last six months it has risen by about 1p per unit. Our bill for the entire year, July-July, was £246!!!

Does anyone think it's worth writing to one of their head honchos to get this looked into again, now that we can show the massive discrepancy? The only thing stopping me so far has been that according to their files, we still "owe" them some money. We haven't paid anything towards this for some months now, and I don't know whether this would be like poking a sleeping bear, so to speak.

If anyone has any thoughts I'd be very interested to hear them.

Thanks all

[Bigmac versus]

The amount owed ceratinly wont go away so dont base your decision on this solely. Depending on the type of boiler your gas usage can vary enormously so there may not be anything wrong at all. There has been problems with billing as you suggest cubic meter/cubic feet (imperial or metric meters) this confusion usually only occurs when the meters are exchanged.

[lexis200]

Thanks Bigmac

I know the payments will need to be made at some point, but until they decide to ask for them again I'm not about to offer it up as we just can't afford it now.

I think there would have had to be a fairly major issue going on with the boiler for it to jump up like that, especially when the previous winter in the same house was much much lower. I also had a look through our old gas bills for the 4 bed 2 reception room house we were in previously, and our bills over winter were £65. The unit cost then was approx half the cost now, so even that doesn't come close, and that was for more rooms, and larger ones at that!

I think I'll wait until we're a bit more flush so I can pay if need be, then have another go with them and see if I can't find out what happened.

[pelham9]

We had an old boiler installed twenty years previously. We had a modern boiler fitted and we used 60% less gas subsequently and we changed nothing else.

[lexis200]

Hi pelham9

I do appreciate what you're saying, but it was the same boiler that we had the previous winter and the bills were nothing like this (we'd have noticed - and had a bit of a heart attack - if they were!)

And even 60% less would mean a quarterly bill of just about 2/3's our current annual bill, and for heating a smaller house then too!

I'm not dismissing what has been said as it may have some standing, but I can't help feeling it changing like that from one winter to the next (btw, I forgot to mention our next bill before we moved was completely standard), and being so much more expensive than both our current (a bit larger) house and our previous (much larger), is a little on the strange side.

The general feeling does seem to be that we're going to have to suck it up as all we have are other bills to show we don't use excessive amounts, but I still think I'll have a go at complaining again when we have the money to pay the rest of this extortionate bill.

Cheers